Bad Places 2: Rebirth
by Goblin Cat KC
Summary: An old enemy returns, threatening both Leonardo's family and friends, but also his recovery. COMPLETE
1. Default Chapter

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Bad Places 2: Rebirth

by KC

Disclaimer: Ninja Turtles belong to someone else. Not me.

Summary: Slowly recovering from returning from his bad places, Leonardo is confronted with an enemy from the past.

Blankets and light. As he woke up, he winced and dug his face further into the first, away from the second. He didn't bother fumbling for his mask since he didn't think Raph would win the argument today. "Go away."

From the doorway, Raphael laughed. "I know you came in late, but you've had plenty of sleep and you swore you'd keep up your training."

"An' I did," Leo said, his voice muffled by the cloth around his mouth. "Paint cans."

"Paint cans?" Raphael's voice turned thoughtful. "April did mention something about that. Twelve of them?"

"Twelve boxes," Leo clarified. "Six five-gallon cans each, upstairs and onto the street. It's more than you make me do, so lay off."

Raphael's voice came low as he figured the weight. "A gallon's like four pounds, so that's twenty pounds each, times six is a hundred twenty, times twelve..." He whistled. "Wow, not bad. Okay, you can skip today. But it's ten o'clock, you might as well get up."

Was I this annoying? Leo wondered. He grabbed his pillow and flung it at his brother, and he heard him grunt from the impact.

"What the hell?" Raphael rubbed his face and picked the pillow up from the ground, surprised at how heavy it was. He turned it over and a huge anthology of Toulouse Lautrec posters fell out from the case. "Y'know, some guys are satisfied by normal porn, but noo, overachiever big brother's gotta be classy about it..."

The next thing that hit him was a book without a pillow to pad it, and he took the hint and left, though he did not turn the lights off. Leo groaned and sat up, heading to the doorway to switch off the lights and then flopping back on his bed. After a moment, he sighed. No use, he was awake. He reached under the bed and drew out the first mask that he touched. All of them were his old blue bandanas newly modified for his photosensitive eyes, covering them with black cloth to keep out the light. With it situated on his face, he saw the world in the murky twilight that was most comfortable to him.

Across from his bed, the wall was clear of any displays or shelves and clean save for the rough outlines of a Manhattan skyline at night he wanted to try. He still had to get a ladder he could sit on, and all the right brushes, and probably a few dropcloths if he didn't want to do something on the floor to hide paint drippings, and God only knew what his family would say about the paint fumes.

"Probably that I'm getting high," he mumbled.

If anyone had told him that in half a year, he'd be a sought after muralist and skipping practice to work, he'd have thought it was pipe dream. But after one nervous breakdown, a living nightmare in Stockman's pocket dimension of specially engineered killers, and attacking his whole family, things had gotten remarkably better. The urge to kill was no longer so strong and slumbered so deeply that he could force it down even when fighting. He had relearned how to fight and leave his enemies merely wounded. He no longer lived only for his family's use and that weight of responsibility didn't leave him crushed under its weight.

There were drawbacks. He moved as fast as the light he could no longer stand, but he had only a fraction of his former strength. Despite the regular sparring sessions with Raphael and the amount of strength he was required to generate, he was a weakling compared to his brothers. He didn't miss his strength much, truth to tell. They were the better brawlers. He was the better killer and took some comfort that in their most recent fights, he was still the one protecting them. Of course with Stockman dead, Shredder long gone, and other lesser thugs quickly dispatched, they didn't need much protecting.

Downstairs they were cleaning up breakfast. He wasn't hungry, in fact he was rarely hungry even now, so he left the light off and retrieved his books from where Raphael had left them, then lay back down. A dog-eared page marked where he'd left off halfway through the poster book and he opened it up, using his pillow to lean upright while reading. He didn't so much read the text as he read the pictures, deciphering lines and shapes and designs. With little light, color was harder, but he made do.

He could have been reading for minutes or hours. He always lost track of time when left alone in his room, so when Raphael came back, he wasn't too surprised to see him. His brother was good about making sure he had at least one meal per day. But when he looked up, his brother looked less indulgent than usual, more concerned. More like he had the weight of the family on his back, and for that Leo felt both relief and guilt.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Raph paused, then shook his head. "April just came down. I think you'd better see this."

The old style posters forgotten, Leo frowned and stood. "Is she all right?" he asked as he moved to pass him.

"Yeah, she's good, just a little shook up." Raph grabbed his arm before he walked out. "Leo...be careful. She's a little emotional right now."

Six months, and she was still nervous around him sometimes. She could front for him, obtain supplies for him, even joke around with him, but she had seen him covered in blood surrounded by the bodies, dead or screaming, of his victims in the street in front of her shop and she couldn't forget. He sighed and looked down. That they were dead was regrettable, but he did not regret killing them and they all knew it. Coupled with his eyeless masks... Leo nodded. That bridge was still being rebuilt. "Just keep yourself between her and me."

They came down into the tv room, clean for once, where April was sandwiched on a couch between Casey and Mike while Donatello and Splinter both bent over the small table. When the two leaders came in, they instinctively moved back a few inches to let them see several black and white photos of April in front of her shop during the day with more photos of Casey knocking over gang members in alleys. Leo glanced over them and picked up the handwritten note, nothing more than a red symbol with the Japanese kanji that made up one name.

Saki.

Vaguely noticing that everyone was looking up to him, that even Raphael had fallen silent, Leo squashed his shudder. Death was supposed to be permanent, it was one of his most comforting thoughts. Once an enemy was dead, he didn't have to worry about them anymore. But if they could come back, what was the use? Worse, if they came back, what could you do to stop them again? He took a deep breath. "We don't know much about humans, " he admitted, "but do they usually get back up after losing their head?"

Casey shook his head with a half-hearted smile. "Not usually."

"It's obviously a challenge," Donatello said. "That they could've done anything and we couldn't have stopped them."

"But..." Mike said. "Could he really be alive? I mean, we all saw his head come off."

Splinter shook his head. "We cannot take the chance. We know the Shredder dabbled in sorcery. I would not put anything beyond him until we know otherwise."

"It's best if April and Casey stay here," Leo said, knowing better than to ask if they'd let themselves be followed. "If they don't know you're gone, we might be able to catch them when they come looking around. Raph, you and I can go right now. Everyone else should stay here until we come back."

Once he had his swords and Raphael his sais, they left the lair, moving through the sewers most of the way. Raphael found himself fighting to keep up with his brother, who occasionally stopped to let him catch up. As they reached the manhole cover, Leo couldn't help a smile.

"You're skimping on your training," he said. "You're slowing down."

"Am not," Raph said. "You're just faster." He climbed up the ladder and tipped the cover up a few inches, checking for anyone in sight before he went up. Leo came after him, shielding his eyes with one hand as he headed for the shadows between April's shop and another. Raphael set the cover down and joined him in heading around to the back.

"Your eyes okay?"

"They're fine," Leo said. "Just really bright out here, that's all."

"I thought the masks fixed that."

"I can go out in sunlight," he said. "I just don't like it."

They picked the lock on the back door and went in, locking it again and dragging a heavy table in front of it. They went around each door, sealing it, but they didn't have to bother with the windows which now had heavy, elegantly curved bars protecting them. Once the shop was secure, Raphael stretched (he had done most of the dragging) and glanced at the kitchen.

"You hungry? I didn't get to lunch before Mike hit it."

"Not really." Sitting on one of the counters, Leonardo took out one sword and began sharpening it in what Raphael recognized as a nervous habit. "Those photos were only a couple of days old, and they were mostly at dusk."

"Yeah, you saw her new earrings, too?" Raph asked. He dug out a frozen pizza and prepared it for the oven. "Man, she must love him to wear those things. They look like candy corn."

"Casey's taste notwithstanding," Leo said, "they've only just started surveillance. They don't know how often we come by. If they notice they're not here, they're going to try to break in."

"Should just be a bunch of regular foot, right? I mean, the worst we'd get is the elite, and I think we could handle them now."

"Yeah..." Leo's voice trailed off as he started sharpening his other sword.

With dinner on its way and nothing left to do but wait, Raphael sat down beside his brother. "You're worried."

"What if it is him? What it he found a way to cheat death?"

"Then we kill him again."

"How do you stop something that's died before?" Leo asked. "I cut off his head once."

"If it's him," Raph pointed out. "They could be lying. Maybe it's his, I don't know, twin brother or something."

Leo didn't look up or stop sharpening. "I hope so. I don't like the idea that death might not be permanent."

Raph didn't ask why. He knew. After six months of taking over responsibility for the family, for protecting his brothers, knowing that if he killed an enemy they would never come back was a cold comfort. Regardless of the loss of life, their death meant they would never threaten his family again. He glanced at his brother. No matter how fast or precise Leonardo was, he needed the same protection, and sometimes even closer supervision.

He hadn't told Splinter how Leonardo still woke up in the middle of the night thinking that the stream's gurgling downstairs was the sound of demons roaming dark hallways, or how he sometimes slowed in his practice routines, coming to a stop for several minutes before realizing where he was, what he was doing. How he had to be reminded to occasionally eat, or that he'd snuck a bottle of valium from Donatello's loot from Stockman's lab. Raphael tolerated that only because he rarely saw the bottle's contents decrease and because he knew those were the nights Leo woke up halfway through regardless.

But all things taken together, he seemed to be improving. He didn't relish killing as much as he did fighting, he didn't break into hysterical laughter anymore and he didn't roam the lair every night to make sure they were all safe, trusting Raphael to do that instead. Most of all, the weight of protecting his family wasn't crushing him anymore. He took care of them in a crisis. Raphael took care of them the rest of the time, and Leonardo's breakdown had convinced their other siblings to train more. Spread out like that, the weight was manageable. For both of them.

TBC...

Note: I'm afraid there's no way I can update this as quickly as the first story, being swamped with classwork no matter how much I put it off and a thesis that refuses to be written. But Gaiman's _Coraline _to guide me and faith to sustain me (and your reviews to help see me through), I'll get everything done, including this.


	2. 2

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Part 2

As the sun set and turned the sky purple, five shadows gathered on the roof of the small grocery on the other side of the street. The old man locked up the doors and pulled down the iron curtain to block any thieves, then started the walk home, never spotting the men on top of his shop. They stood close to the edge, waiting for April to come out and join Casey, but the blinds were closed, the lights were off, and no seemed to be inside.

When fifteen minutes passed and no one came out, they climbed down to the street and kicked in the door. Moving like a whirlwind, they entered and scanned the room for enemies and targets. No one. Cautious now, they spread out a bit, fully coming inside and even closing the door after themselves. The first one suddenly held up one hand, warning them to be silent. He'd heard something, and stared at the counter. Now that they were listening, they all could hear the conversation clearly.

"--all your fault."

"You're the one who forgot to block the front door."

"You were too slow hiding."

"Oh, blame me for...hey, did they stop moving?"

"'Cause you're so damn loud--"

"Geez, by comparison you make Mike seem quiet. They didn't notice--"

The elite glanced at each other and nodded, readying their weapons and creeping towards the counter.

"They noticed."

"Sure?"

"No, Leo, they're coming closer 'cause they wanna see what's on sale. Of course they've noticed."

"Okay, okay, plan B then."

"No. Your plan B's suck."

"Do not."

"Do too."

"Do not!"

"Your idea of a plan B is charge in and kill everyone."

The foot elite were inches from the counter, and the one in front raised his sword, ready to leap.

"Told you."

"Okay, fine." Leo sighed and considered. "How about this? Just before they come in, we record ourselves arguing on tape and when they jump the counter, we get 'em from behind?"

A sinking feeling welled in the elites' stomachs that they'd just been had, and they whirled around in time to see their two rearguard dropped to the ground, two turtles standing above them. Leo popped a few joints in his neck, readying himself for the fight.

"Finally," he said, "Foot Elite. I can kill these without worrying."

"Remember where we are," Raph said. "You wanna splatter April's shop?"

For a moment, Leo actually considered it. Blood could always be cleaned up, and the police were often good enough to do it for him. But April hadn't even looked at him earlier, and if she came home to the same kind of battle scene...

"Fine," Leo said. "I'll just break their necks. We can question the ones we already got."

In front of them, the elite shared a glance and nodded once. Leonardo briefly wondered if the elite thought he was overconfident and he couldn't help but remember his defeat at their hands. No doubt they thought he was still at that level. He sheathed one sword and raised the second. The outcome of this fight would be much different.

Just a few more minutes. The sun was almost down.

The elite came at them at once, swords up, their tight formation driving a wedge between the two brothers and separating them. Leonardo took a step back as two of them focused on him, parrying one slash and dodging another. He blinked as he straightened again. They seemed to move in slow motion, attacking as if underwater. Before they could try again, he sidestepped the closest's slash and came around him, grabbed his head and twisted.

Bones popped under his hands. The crack echoed through the shop. The two remaining elites stopped and stared at their fallen comrade's body, a bit of blood trickling from his mouth. Raphael took his chance to land a solid kick in his stunned enemy's stomach, then double-fisted him to the ground. Four down, one to go.

The last elite turned and ran. Leo froze, shocked that the elite was running and not the other way around. Then he realized why the elite was running, despite how Saki treated failure.

Ignoring his brother's yell, he chased after the elite, following him down the alley and then up a fire escape, a cold anticipation washing over him as he saw the elite look over his shoulder and found Leo running just that much faster. Memories sprang up. Before, Leonardo had kept the entire clan at bay until, exhausted and cornered, four elites overpowered him. One clan, one turtle.

There was no glare of sunlight this time. The sun was down, the sky turning darker shades of blue to purple. As the light came more from the moon and the city, he moved easier, as if the night lent him strength. Tonight, he was the elite, he was the predator. Crows and rats on the ledges and air conditioner units they passed knew the game being played, knew the players, and knew the inevitable outcome. Hopefully the predator would leave some of his kill for them to scavenge.

The elite was in arm's reach. He drew back his sword to swing and his enemy vanished over the ledge, dropping several stories. The elite landed safely on all fours, crouching to absorb the shock, and a second later a katana chopped through his spine, sticking vertically out of his back.

Looking over the side of the building, Leonardo watched the elite drop sideways on the alley, instantly paralyzed. The hunt was over. He found the fire escape beneath him and came down, never looking away from his prey. Once on the ground, he took his sword and drew it out. The elite groaned and blood began to color the pavement, slowly spreading as Leo walked around and knelt in front of him.

Leonardo looked into his pain-wracked eyes. The elite could barely crane his neck enough to see him. A rush of pleasure. Satisfaction. This elite's death would be sweeter than the other's. This one had pain turned resignation, and those flavors mixed to add fine spice to the coming kill.

"You meant to tell your master what I am now," Leo said, his voice as dark as his eyes. "How I've changed. What I've become."

He stood up and placed his sword tip on the ground next to the elite's throat. "You'll still give him a message, my message. I answer his challenge." He dragged the sword through the elite's throat, scraping the pavement and jerking it through the thick vertebrae. The head rolled a few inches away and blood pumped from the severed arteries.

The body twitched behind him as he headed back to the shop. Over the noise of traffic and the warm wind blowing through the streets, he heard the wings of crows and claws of rats as they descended on the corpse.

When he arrived at the shop, he found Raphael standing over their three captured elites, each of them bound and on the floor. Raph took one look at his brother and knew the other one was dead. He let out a breath and glanced at their prisoners. "They said they had orders to kill April and Casey," he said.

"What about Saki?" Leo asked. "Is it true?"

"I dunno," Raph said. "They won't answer me about that."

Leonardo stepped in front of the three and stared at them. "I killed your master once," he said. "Do I have to do it again?"

Silence for several seconds before one finally spoke. "The master is returned," one elite said, and the voice revealed her to be female. "Brought back from the underworld. You will not stop him."

"That's ridiculous," Raph said. "No one comes back from the dead."

She did not speak again.

"I think that's the only information we'll get," Leo said. "All that remains is what to do with them."

Raphael didn't answer. They could let them go, but they'd only return to Shredder and warn him about how Leonardo had changed. They couldn't keep them prisoners forever. That only left one choice, but--

Seeing his brother's hesitation, Leo put his hand on his brother's shoulders. "Go home. I'll catch up to you in a few minutes."

"Are you sure?" Raphael looked at him with pleading eyes, wordlessly begging for another way. Leonardo wondered if this was so terrible, and if he really had changed so much.

"Yes. I'll handle this." He waited for Raphael to leave the shop, watching him disappear back into the sewers before turning his attention back to the elites. They faced him without asking for mercy. He thought for a moment. There could be no blood, and no way to trace it back to April. Snapped necks all, then. And then because it felt wrong to simply dump them in a heap in some trash bin, he left them side by side a few alleys down and called in an anonymous tip so none of their bodies would be robbed or mistreated.

He felt a little odd afterward, as if he had found a little honor and didn't know what to do with it. So he put it out of his mind and followed after his sibling. Raphael was only halfway to the lair when he caught up, and they walked silently back home. In another habit of his Raph was noticing, Leo avoided the family and retreated to his room, leaving him to explain everything that had happened.

"It's taken care of," he said as they looked up from their seats in front of the tv. He sat down with them but didn't touch the last two slices of pizza on the table.

"It wasn't Stockman again, was it?" Mike asked.

"He's dead," Don said. "I saw it, remember?"

"It was elites," Raph said, throwing his head back and staring at the ceiling. "Five of them. They said they had orders to kill April and Casey."

Curled up next to Casey, April winced and turned her head towards him. He tightened his arm around her.

"And what of the Shredder?" Splinter asked. "Is it another person?"

"...no. They said he's back from the dead, or the underworld, whatever you call it."

Don shook his head slowly. "That's just not scientifically possible."

"Perhaps they did not use science," Splinter said. "I do not know what sorcerer they are playing with, but the foot clan may have indeed found a way to cheat death."

"How's Leo handling it?" Mike asked, glancing up at his brother's room. It was dark, but that didn't mean Leo was asleep. He was probably staring at the ceiling again, which didn't seem as psychotic now that he'd painted stars like Van Gogh's Starry Night above his bed, but they all knew he wasn't really looking at the stars.

"He's more worried about how to kill him again," Raph said. "How do we do it? If they can keep bringing Shredder back..."

Splinter shook his head. There were no easy answers, or even any answers, that he could give right then. "We will simply have to wait and see."

Upstairs, Leonardo stared beyond his ceiling, remembering the fight with Shredder, the feel of his sword cutting through his enemy's neck. It had seemed so final then, one slice and the fight was over. But worse than Shredder's victory over death was Leo's memory of how he'd killed him. It took strength to take off someone's head in one strike, especially in midair. Beheading the elite had taken most of his strength. The risk of his sword becoming trapped in someone was too great to ignore.

He turned on his side and stared at the wall. There was no way to regain all of his strength, and what had returned was not enough. If Shredder was truly alive, becoming a vicious killer only brought him up to Saki's level. Without the power he'd once wielded with every stroke, the fight would be too close to call.

The artist could never win. He closed his eyes and forced himself to fall asleep. Tomorrow he would wake up as his family's sword one more time. Tomorrow he would return his mind to Stockman's hell of constant death and regain the little speed he'd lost, and Raphael would provide adequate strength training. He didn't worry about how he would bring himself back, the artistic brother who'd only recently emerged. It had taken months to come this far, and now he willingly destroyed it without concern for the future. When the time came and he confronted the Shredder, that would be decided.

One way or the other.

TBC...


	3. 3

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Part 3

Early the next morning, Raphael made his rounds to check on the lair and his family. Donatello slept soundly slumped over his desk, Stockman's notes and equations spread out before him. Raphael set a blanket over his shoulders. It was too late to get him into bed. Hopefully he wouldn't be too sore when he woke up.

In Mike's room, the new nightlight in the shape of Spiderman leaping off the wall kept the area around the bed bathed in a gold glow. Raph drew the blanket back up from where Mike had kicked it during the night. After the first few nights home, when Mike started sleeping in his own room again, he found that he couldn't sleep in total darkness anymore. Even just a couple of days in the game's black halls left him reliving the screams and sounds of bones crunching in his dreams. Since Raph had picked up the nightlight for him, he slept without nightmares, without curling up in the corner of his bed, eyes squeezed shut, calling for one of his big brothers. Raph left him resting easily, picking his way over the simple tripwires he left near the door.

Leonardo was not in his room. Raphael went in anyway and found the bottle of valium on the mattress. The pills were so big he could tell when one of them was gone, but he opened it and counted anyway to be sure.

"28...29...30...31..." Yup, one gone. He put the top back on and stuffed the bottle under the pillow with a new artbook, one with a samurai on the cover. It reminded him to look for his brother's swords, but he only spotted the empty stands in the corner. Hoping his sibling hadn't taken off during the night, Raphael left the room and headed downstairs, toward the practice room.

He heard metal sweeping through the air before he saw Leonardo in the center of the darkened room, a single candle in the corner his only light as he moved through the enclosed space, coming close to hitting the walls but never touching them. Careful not to make a sound, Raphael crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe, watching the twists and feints and counter feints and wild slashes that would have sent heads across the floor. He shook his head in awe. His big brother was a good artist, but fifteen years had made him a deadly swordsman.

And then Leonardo began to slow down, coming out of a landing with a single sweep from the ground up, dissecting whoever he had in his head, and as he brought the sword back down to a defensive extension, he came to a stop. Raph's head snapped up. Leo hadn't said anything so he couldn't have heard him come in, and his breathing came back to normal, which meant he wasn't tensing up for a new attack.

Not again, Raph thought. It's been half a year, these have stopped.

As the minutes dragged, Raphael looked down and winced. Maybe Leo just hadn't told them--but no, he'd watched him on occasion, this hadn't happened for months.

In Leonardo's head the fight continued, but the sensations suddenly became more real, more solid. He heard the shriek of a screamer to his right as he whirled, sliced it in half as he ducked a feeder's swipe, jabbed his sword up into its head, then lunged forward and rolled under a wave of screamers as they poured out of the ceiling, ignoring the blood and gore he had to slide through before he could stand again. He managed to get behind the main attack but as he stood, he heard the heavy steps of a demon coming down the hall, small enough to run quickly but large enough to scare everything else back. He held his sword up and lowered his head, waiting for it to get closer. At that speed he couldn't escape, but there was a chance he could slice its head in half, if he didn't mind those teeth up against his face. But there was no help here, no steady bullets piercing its hide, no knife watching his back. He stared down the hall, his only light the faint blue veins pulsing along the floor, and held his breath, waiting for the monster to reach him, for the right moment to kill.

"Leo!"

He dropped the sword. The demon lunged and passed through him as the hall faded back into the practice room and Raphael was beside him, hand holding his shoulder too tight, ready to block anything Leo might aim at him. And a very worried look on his face. Leo let out a breath and shook his head.

"It's all right," he said softly. "I'm..." Fine? Good? Obviously not. "...back."

"Where'd you go?" Raph asked, but he already knew the answer.

"To the game. Weird, though." Leo knelt and picked his sword up. "I was alone this time."

"We weren't there?"

"No...not even Felix or Chanta." Leo sheathed his sword and glanced at him. "That's never happened before."

"What about this? It happened recently or this the first time?"

"'This' what?"

"This," Raph said, gesturing at his brother, "going away, stopping in the middle of practice, this."

"I..." Leo glanced at the kitchen, then back at Raphael. This conversation was probably going to take awhile and his legs were already sore from the workout that a regulated kata couldn't give. "Can we get something to eat? I'm starving..."

With a nod, Raphael laughed as they walked across the lair. "That gives me a good idea of when it happens. Usually I have to force feed you."

"I'm not that bad," Leo said. "It's not too often. Once a month, I think, when I'm practicing alone."

"And why didn't you say anything?"

"They were slowing down." Leaning against the kitchen counter, Leo watched his brother fish something out of the fridge, automatically taking what was offered. More leftover egg drop soup. He had a very limited diet now, still re-acclimating himself to eating.

"Kinda worries me that you only get hungry after going back," Raph said, opting for leftover supreme pizza. "Especially knowing what was in there."

"When I could barely eat just after?" Leo said. "I don't remember it so well now."

"You were in three months."

Figuring they weren't going to sit at a table, Leo hopped onto the counter and leaned against the wall. "I mean, I'm forgetting certain things. How the place smelled, how it felt to move through the bodies. I don't even remember how the halls sounded when we weren't fighting."

"What do you remember?"

"Small things," Leo said, his voice becoming distant. "The light on the floor. How blood was slightly darker than the shadows. The sound of a demon's claws. A screamer's yell. Mostly how it felt to cut something apart and not feel any guilt for it."

Finished with his own breakfast, Raph looked down at the floor. Six months and they still couldn't get Leo back to his pre-game notions of necessary kills. Splinter had confided in him his concerns that Leonardo had tasted the joy of slaughter, and even though Raph wasn't sure what that meant, he didn't like the sound of it.

"Do you like killing?"

Leonardo blinked and stared at him. "What?"

"Do you like killing?" Raph stared back and held his breath. As far as he knew, it was the first time anyone had asked his brother that point blank without dancing around the subject.

Halls full of broken demons and creatures, claws twitching, limbs spasming, blood coating everything and still raining down on him. White Talons prone or in pieces in the street in front of April's shop, blood flowing into the gutters with the rain, the stench of urine and bile that he hadn't really noticed at the time but remembered now. The handful of girls in front of the liquor store, holding their guns like pros, ready to head in until he cut their fingers off, slit open their arms and left them crying on the sidewalk while the shop owner called 911. Four elites in a neat bloodless row and one more headless in an alley.

"Not entirely." He heard Raphael's quick breath and raised one hand to calm him. "I'm not bloodthirsty. I've never killed unless I had to. But there's a...a..." He growled and looked away. "I can't think of a word. Exhilaration? Rush? Satisfaction?"

"That they're dead?"

"That I defeated them. That they tried to kill me and I survived." He finished the last of his soup and set the box aside. "Where the fight becomes less about what we're fighting for and more about victory, about the next hit. Like a hunt. Am I being clear?"

"Yeah..." Raph nodded slowly. "Less about the reason you're fighting and more about fighting well. Killing well."

Leo didn't answer for a moment, following the patterns in the stone floor. Grey swirls and hard lines flowed on the bricks, reminding him of Splinter's zen garden. "I didn't enjoy killing those elites."

Raphael took the box and threw it away. "I was worried a little. What about that one you chased down?"

"Took his head off." Leo looked up at his brother. "If he'd gotten to Shredder and told him how I've changed, faster but weaker, half-blind...I can't risk him learning it."

"I know..." Raphael suddenly laughed. "I get it. The message. You gave Shredder your own message."

"A reminder. If he thinks he's escaped death, I can bring it right back to him." He put his arms around himself. "I hope."

Upstairs and in the backroom they heard their brothers and friends waking up. Leo took that as his cue to retreat to the bridge, watching the water appear and disappear, while Raphael went back upstairs to yank Michelangelo out of bed. Splinter came out of his room first, coming across the bridge on his way to the kitchen.

"Good morning," he said softly, "no nightmares?"

"A few, master," Leo admitted. "Nothing bad."

Splinter nodded and continued walking. Leonardo went back to gazing at the water. He hadn't told anyone that his worst nightmares were not of the game but of the days before the game, slave to his family's needs, and that when he sat bolt upright in bed, it was not because a demon had caught him in its jaws but because he felt a crushing weight on his shoulders, felt the need to run and leave it behind. Only because it dissipated to nothingness when he finally woke up did he manage to stay in the lair.

"Mornin'," Casey called out to anyone in range. He swiped the rest of the pizza, leaving take-out boxes and mystery leftovers from several days back.

It wouldn't matter much, this early in the morning Donatello survived on coffee and Mike could eat anything. Leo considered offering to make a food run, but only if he could drag one of his siblings with him. After a nightmare and a revisit to the game, he needed to make sure he'd come home. He was pretty sure he wouldn't run, but better to err on the side of the caution.

He remained on the bridge as they gathered around the televisions, Casey and April on the couch, Splinter on the recliner, Don and Mike on the floor and Raphael leaning over the couch. For a few seconds they suffered through Mike changing the channels as fast as he could press the button, and then Raphael snatched the control out of his hand and set it to the news.

Leonardo winced and waited for it.

"...and that's world news. In local news, police are investigating a group homicide in east Manhattan. An anonymous tip led investigators to a grisly scene, four bodies with broken necks laid out side by side. Police are not drawing any conclusions yet regarding gang violence but have not ruled out a ritual killing due to the methodical display of the bodies. A suspected fifth victim wearing similar oriental clothing was found several blocks away, decapitated. If you have any information, please contact the authorities.

In our continuing coverage of the river exploration project, police are still investigating witness reports of a large burst of light several weeks ago--"

The lair was silent. Leo wished he'd retreated to his room even a minute ago. He heard Splinter stand and approach, and he took a deep breath.

"Five elites?"

"Yes, master. Raphael helped me stop them."

"But..." Splinter looked him over. "You are uninjured."

"They couldn't touch me," Leo whispered. "I snapped the first one's neck easily. Then one ran off and I had to run him down before he could tell the Shredder. When I came back, Raphael had the other three bound and we got what we could out of them."

"And then?"

"And then I sent Raphael home."

Splinter thought that over, then nodded. "Five elites is no small achievement, even with your brother. I am merely thankful neither of you was hurt."

Leo looked at him in confusion. "You...?"

"You had to keep them from taking a message back to Saki. I doubt you took pleasure in their deaths." Splinter put his hand on his son's. "I take it you were the anonymous phone call?"

"Yes, master." Leo paused, then said in a rush, "I didn't want to kill all of them but--"

"I know," Splinter said. "I do not see this as a slaughter, Leonardo. Distasteful as it is, it had to be done to safeguard your brothers. But...the one in the alley...?"

"He was already dying," Leo said. "I...I used him to send my own message."

Splinter sighed and looked back into the water. Leo wasn't sure what, but he knew he'd done something wrong. "Master?"

"I pray this war ends soon," Splinter said. "Especially for you." With one last pat on his hand, Splinter left and returned to his room. A second later Raphael followed him. Each time that happened now, Leo felt as if he'd been punched, feeling the need to join Splinter but forced to accept that was his brother's duty now. With a resigned breath, he turned and went back upstairs, forcing himself not to run, escaping into his dark room. He stretched out on his bed, staring between the stars on the ceiling into black space, a cold darkness that took him back to the game, where the rules were simple.

Kill. Be killed. Over and over again. He'd never missed it so much.

TBC...

Note: Shredder was an alien? What? He was always human in the comics. (Yes, I'm following the series on dvd, just up to the Ultimate Ninja here.) Yeah, well, we're going with the comics on this one. He's human.


	4. 4

****

Part 4

Splinter knelt on his mat, slowly lighting the candles around him. He didn't have to glance up when the door opened to know who had come in. The steps were impatient, rushed. Leonardo always entered quietly, making as little noise as he could. Now Splinter knew that was partly from respect and partly from fear. He looked up at Raphael and felt the now familiar sting that he saw a red bandanna instead of blue. He loved Raphael, but his presence was a constant reminder of how he'd failed Leonardo.

"I am worried," he said. "To put his dead on display..."

"It's not like that," Raph said, sitting down carefully around the candles. "There's a difference between displaying 'em and laying them out. I mean, when we see a lot of bodies on the news, don't they line 'em up, too?"

Splinter considered that, continuing to light the candles. The darkness in the room gave way to a soft glow. "That...is true. I had not thought..." He sighed and flipped the match once, extinguishing the flame. "This is completely unfair to Leonardo. I compare everything he does to his previous behavior, but he was afraid of me then."

"Master Splinter--"

"No, Raphael," he shook his head. "We must admit the fact that he felt he could never contradict me. His drawings are proof enough of that. He will never tell me exactly how he feels, and my guessing is inaccurate at best."

"But he'll tell me," Raph said. "He doesn't like killing, he told me that himself and he hasn't lied to me yet."

Splinter smiled a little sadly. "He may twist the truth around once in awhile, but he will never lie. That at least remains constant." He stared at the candles, the reddish glow no longer as comforting as it once was. "His leaving of a message, however, bothers me. I understand the frustration he must feel--"

"Fear," Raphael said. "Master, he's hiding it well, but he's scared. I mean, all of us are scared that Saki's back, but Leo...he's the one who killed him before. He's the one who'll have to do it again, but what if he can't?"

"He is not alone. You must remind him of that. I know habits formed after so long will be hard to break, but he must realize that he has all of us. He need no longer carry the weight of protecting his family alone."

"I think that's where he's headed," Raph admitted. "He just expresses it different than before. Instead of waking us up in the morning, he kills anyone who might be a threat. He keeps us safe and leaves me to take care of all three of 'em."

"'All three'?"

Raphael winced. He hadn't meant to let that slip. "Leo...still needs me to hold him back. Kind of. I mean, he's getting better, if you don't count the elites--"

Splinter raised one hand, stopping him. "If you think he's taking pleasure in causing death--"

"He doesn't. I asked him--" he ignored Splinter's startled look "--and he doesn't enjoy killing. He...takes pride not in killing but in killing well. Like...not being proud of what he does, but of how he does it." He watched his master's face carefully, wishing he had as much experience reading his subtle emotions as his brother did. Leo could have told exactly what Splinter was thinking. He didn't want his older brother catching hell because he slipped up and damn when he did start feeling this responsible for Leo anyway? "Master?"

"Pride in how he fights," Splinter whispered. "I understand. It's all right, Raphael, you have not gotten him in trouble. I think it may even be a change for the better. I hope that it is a sign he is discovering his honor once again."

"He never lost it!" Raph said, then looked down when he realized he'd shouted. "Uh...sorry, I didn't..."

Reaching over the barrier of candles, Splinter put his hand on Raphael's and shook his head. "Your faith in your brother does you credit. I trust your instinct in this, as I trust you to keep watch over him. He still needs you."

He needs all of us, Raphael thought. He merely nodded, sensing this conversation was nearing its end. "Father?"

"Yes?"

"What do we do when we face Shredder again? How...how do we make sure he doesn't come back?"

Splinter fell silent and closed his eyes. "I do not know. I have thought about it, trying to find a solution, but we have too little information to make any guesses. I'm afraid we may have to make that decision when we come to it."

Neither of them said what they were both thinking. Ultimately, Leonardo would make that decision and hopefully live with it.

Upstairs on his bed but wide awake, Leonardo eventually heard the televisions shut off and everyone leave the main room. He stood up and went to his door, listening for any stragglers. Once he was sure he was alone, he went halfway down the stairs before leaping to the floor, landing with one hand on the floor, the other arm flung behind him for balance. Only while crossing the bridge did he realize that he hadn't walked down the entire flight of stairs for months, too used to taking the fastest route for everything. He'd even developed a habit leaping up the stairs to his room.

The little things would be what drove him crazy, he thought, not the killing or fear he might run from home still. Old habits had died during the game. He hadn't joked or practiced with his siblings or watched the news in months. He hadn't walked up the stairs or eaten anything beyond the simplest--

He winced. No, the little things, like not being able to eat unless he was distracted, the way a sparkle of light made him shield his eyes, covered or not. The way he whirled when he heard a metallic scrape, the rush of adrenalin as he prepared for a feeder's attack or a screamer's lunge. He managed to hide it from his brothers, although he suspected Raphael knew how far he was from normal. And now with Shredder back from the grave...

Train. He needed to train. He had to be as fast as he had been coming out of the game. It was his only chance against Shredder. Luckily the practice room was empty. Taking a deep breath, he stood in the center of the room, calming his mind. For now, Shredder didn't exist, he had no problems. All that existed were the dark tunnels of the game...no. He hesitated. Memories of the game made him fall inwards, training him in mind but not in body. No, that had to change. Reliving those three months hadn't helped him in the past six. But he cringed at the thought of katas, predictable and slow. Still...a run through couldn't hurt.

He called up the simplest kata he knew, returning to the basics, a simple kick, a sharply defined punch, a well-executed block. Then came the next kata, and the next, more complicated moves, roundhouse kicks, midair spin kicks, sweeps, backfists and rolls, moving up into feints and counter feints, flips, dodges that turned into attacks. It seemed like he retraced his entire life of training in the span of a few hours.

And for the first time in as far as he could remember, the moves came easily. The routine no longer seemed dull when compared to the memories of the game. The set steps became less rigid and more like water flowing through a channel, cold and clear. How long had it been since he'd felt so relaxed? These weren't the slow moves of tai chi; he'd moved into the most advanced forms, the ones even his brothers hadn't mastered or even begun. He should have been struggling to keep up with each move. Instead he followed them easily, not caring that with these moves he wouldn't be able to break bone or cut off heads.

He paused. Maybe that was it. He'd worried about regaining his strength constantly for six months. Now he didn't care. No one could keep up with him. No one. His head lifted. No doubt, not even Shredder. He didn't have much strength, and even less hope of regaining it, but he'd traded it for something better, for what good was Shredder's sword if he couldn't strike him? Not a perfect trade off, he knew, but he had a little glimmer of hope now. He could kill Shredder, he'd done it before. He just had to find a way to make it permanent this time. And this time his enemy's fear should work for him. He was sure Shredder remembered his sword cutting through his throat. His message would leave no doubt of that. Perhaps he should have made the message bloodier, made a sharper impression...

Just outside the room, April leaned on the door frame, arms crossed, watching as he practiced. She was sure she'd been silent, but as he finished a devious counterfeit, he took a moment to catch his breath. With his back still to her, he tilted his head. "You up for practice or you just watching?"

She smiled and took a step inside. "How do you always know when I'm around you?"

He stretched, cracking the knuckles in both hands. This was as good a place for a break. "It's pretty easy. You're breathing."

"You could hear me?" she asked. "I thought I was quiet."

"You were," he said. "I didn't hear you at all."

"But you knew I was there," she said.

"Splinter taught you about maai, right?"

"Uh..." She glanced sideways to make sure Splinter wasn't around to hear. "He said something like making an aura out of my...ki?"

Leo nodded.

"But to be honest, that sounded so much like Dragonball Z flinging around glowing balls I couldn't take it all that seriously."

He couldn't help a laugh. "I swear, it isn't like that. It's...look, when you're alone in a room, can't you tell when someone comes in? Like instinct?"

"Well, yeah, but half the time I'm wrong." She jammed her hands in her pockets and came closer. "It's just my imagination acting up."

"You think we never have false alarms?" He sheathed his sword and leaned against the wall. "I sometimes catch Mike talking to someone he thinks came inside. Water coming through the pipes can feel like someone. It's...weird."

She watched him as his look turned inward and quiet. "What's wrong?"

"Just remembering. Saki had an extremely powerful ki. Fighting him...was one of the most difficult things I've ever done." Before she could respond, he shook his head and looked up. "Did you want to practice?"

Knowing he was changing the subject but letting him get away with it, she nodded once. "Yeah, but I wasn't looking forward to it. Splinter says I need to practice at least once a day, but it gets boring repeating the same kata over and over."

He laughed. "Tell me about it. You wanna practice fight instead?"

"Sure, just--" She tilted her head. "You sure you're okay?"

A nod. "Don't worry, I'll go easy on you. Just...let's use practice swords, instead. I haven't sparred anyone but Raph lately."

She retrieved the wooden bokken from the weapons rack and tossed him one, envying how he caught its hilt easily. "What do you mean?"

"He means," Raph said, coming inside, "that whenever he starts practicing katas during a fight with Mike, Splinter pairs us up. He can't do that with me. Mind an audience?"

"Uh, okay," April said. "I guess."

"Mike gets predictable," Leo defended himself. He wondered if Raphael was here to keep an eye on him, make sure he didn't hurt April, but shrugged that off. If they were worried, he wouldn't have been allowed to suggest the match. Heck, April wouldn't have agreed at all if that was the case.

"Ready?" he asked.

She nodded. They both raised their swords and Leo waited for April to tap hers against his to start. His breathing slowed. Forgetting his brother, he focused solely on her eyes and the wooden edge between them. She seemed to move in slow motion, the tip of her sword swaying through the air to touch his. The vibration traveled down his sword to his arms, triggering his response.

With a yell, she lunged at him, swinging the bokken straight at his head. Obviously Raphael had given her a few pointers. He held still for a moment, watching her come closer. Was she moving slower? Her hair floated instead of flying, as if she moved underwater. He heard Raphael shout at him to dodge but ignored him, slipping under the edge at the last moment. The wind from the passing edge swept his bandanna back and he crouched, knocking her sword sideways and coming around her side.

To his surprise, she managed to block and pushed forward, trying to startle him back. He almost smiled. That might have worked on a foot ninja who expected his enemy to run, but after three months, he was only startled when someone ran. Instead he grabbed her wrist and held onto her as he fell backwards, tossing her over his shoulder and sending her sprawling onto the mat. When she raised her head, she found his sword tip a few inches in front of her face.

"How did...?" she stammered, then glared at Raphael. "You said that would work!"

Laughing, Raph raised his hands in defense. "Hey, I didn't guarantee anything. Good try, though."

"It would've worked," Leo said, pulling back the sword and holding out his hand, helping her stand. "But I'm used to that now. Try it on Donatello, I promise you'll run right over him."

"Don't let him hear you say that," Raph said.

Leo smirked at him and glanced at April. "Wanna try again?"

"Darn straight," she said.

They both resumed their starting positions, tapped swords, and began. Again, he saw her moving in slow motion, and he figured it couldn't just be his own speed. He easily came around her and tapped her hard on the shoulder. "Come on, you're faster than this."

She winced and blocked his next hit. "Splinter says I have to watch your moves and react to them."

"Watch too long and you'll lose your head," Leo said. "Find your rhythm, match mine."

To make sure she found his rhythm a little easier, he fought her in steady beats, striking to the rhythm of his heartbeat. It was a little faster than she expected, but she kept up, keeping him from touching her.

"I can't fight back," she complained.

"Don't worry if someone's driving you backwards," he said, "it's only bad for your pride."

"Unless he's pushing you off a cliff," Raph called out. "Then worry."

"How often does that happen?" Leo snapped.

"In our line of work, a lot."

"All that matters," Leo said, turning back to April, "is that you block or dodge all my hits, and when I make a mistake, or when you see an opening, you take it."

"But what if you never make a mistake?"

Raph groaned. "Oh God, don't feed his ego like that."

"Once in awhile I might make a mistake," Leo said with a grin. "Your average street thug will make more. You wanna try advancing instead?"

"Yes, before I trip over something." When he nodded once, she trusted him not to attack and instead swung towards him. He backed up, allowing her to practicing coming at him.

"Push yourself," he said. "Faster."

"I'm afraid I'll hurt you," she said.

He blinked in surprise and had to rush to block her next swing. "You will not hurt me, I promise. Especially not when I'm in front of Raph. He'd never let me live it down."

"Got that right."

"Faster, April. Try listening to your heart."

Raph raised his voice. "And remember your breathing."

Obeying, she picked up speed, at first swinging haphazardly until she became more acclimated to the beat in her chest, timing herself to her breath. As he blocked each hit, either with his sword or by dodging to the side, she found a pattern as he reacted to her moves. It reminded her of Casey's kung-fu movies where the fighters threw countless punches and kicks but never touched each other.

"There, now you're doing it." He dodged another swipe and took a step back, both hands holding his sword before him. "Remember, you're not trying to strike my sword."

April nodded, remembering Splinter's lessons. "I'm trying to draw it away from your center. It's a balancing act." She tried to force his sword away to one side, but quickly realized that would never happen, not at her skill level. "Is there a way to use that maai thing in a fight?"

"Yes, it's just not something I'd wanna rely on too much."

"Aw, show her how ya do it," Raph said. "You gotta see him fight blind, April. It's freaky."

"Just because you can't concentrate enough to do it," Leo said.

A little miffed that he could talk with his brother while fighting her, April took a step back and put down her sword. "Can you really do it, though? I know I saw you four do it at the farm, but..."

Leo glared at Raph, then sighed like a martyr and reached up, turning his bandanna sideways. As a precaution, he tossed his bokken aside. He hadn't fought blind since he'd acclimated to the game; he wouldn't take the chance he might hurt his friend. "Whenever you're ready."  
"Wha...with a sword?" April gasped. "I know it's just wood, but--"

"It's fine, you won't touch me," Leo said. "Go on."

With the world plunged into true darkness, not simply the twilight in which he lived, his hearing expanded. The slightest breeze became a warning of motion. One by one they came, hesitant at first, faster when she really couldn't hit him. The blade came through the air but without any way to see it, he relied on the wind and the ripples her presence sent through his maai. The sense of danger didn't go away even though the sword was made of wood; the edge was still dangerous. It skirted just above his skin as he dodged left, right, leaning backwards, flipping over its edge when she swung low, trying to knock him off his feet.

Endless twilight in his mask was nothing compared to true blindness. He hadn't fought like this in awhile, and he felt his lack of practice with each swing. The blade had to come uncomfortably close to his skin, and he used the pattern of her attacks as much as the breeze off the sword.

After letting her back him across the practice room, he decided to end it and waited for another sweeping arc. He ducked, letting the sword cross her body, then rushed in close and grabbed her arm, sending her backwards onto the mat. She grunted as she went down and he heard the bokken clatter across the floor. Unable to suppress a smile, turned his mask back so he could see and found her at his feet, up on her elbows glaring at him.

"You could've warned me," she said.

"Not as much fun." He bent and held his hand out to help her up.

With a smirk, she grabbed at his hand, intending to yank him beside her on the mat. Raphael saw the look in her eyes and knew what she was going to do, but he only had time to gasp. Leonardo had gained some strength back, but not enough--

April blinked. One moment his hand was in front of her. The next, it was gone. She looked up and found him standing straight, hand well out of reach. "How--?"

"You are fast, grasshopper," he said. "But not fast enough." He gave her a quick bow and left his bokken on the floor next to her. "Loser puts everything away, right?"

While she grumbled and gathered up the bokken, he stretched and left the room, heading for what was quickly becoming his favorite spot, the bridge. The lair seemed empty, but he spotted a faint glow from under the door to Donatello's lab, and if Casey was out, that probably meant Mike was out as well. Hopefully just a supply run, though he didn't like the idea of those two out on their lonesome. How long had he been practicing? Maybe he should go out after them. Shredder was bound to be enraged and he hated the thought of his siblings suffering for his violent tendencies...

"You're brooding again," Raph said, leaning on the railing beside him.

"I'm an artist," Leo said, "it's in the job description."

"Well, I'm the hothead, I got dibs. What's wrong?"

"Where's Mike and Casey?"

"Oh..." Raph nodded once. "Figures that's what upset you. They're only getting groceries, they'll be back soon."

"Raph..."

"Relax, they just went to that little place around the warehouse. They'll be fine."

"Raph, it's Mike and Casey." He stared at his sibling. "If either of them spots anything shiny--"

"Leo..."

"It's too dangerous up there for just two of us. You should know that. If something happens--"

"Geez," Raph said, rolling his eyes for emphasis, "let me deal with it, huh? You're supposed to be laying off from the constant worrying."

"Seems like I'm the only one who cares," Leo snapped.

Raph froze. Oh no, I didn't not just hear that, he thought. "What did you say?"

Leo faced his brother. "I'm saying you're not considering everything that could happen. You should have at least gone with them."

"At least I trust them to handle a supply run on their own," Raph said. "I'm not gonna pretend I have to hold everyone's hand to--"

"So you just let them go out?" Leo said. "When you know Shredder's elites must be searching--"

"Yeah, and who left a few bodies around just to piss ol' Shred-head off, huh? I only see one borderline psycho in this room--"

"You never changed at all, did you?" Leo said, hands clenching into fists. "You never make a mistake, no, it's always me who can't do anything right when you're the one who lets his emotions run off--"

"Whoa, back off!" Raph growled. "I am not hearing this from the guy who tried to off himself."

"I did not--"

"No, of course not! You were gonna let those things do it."

"I'm faster than they are. I could've handled it--"

"Now who's delusional?"

"The idiot who thinks Mike and Casey can handle a pack of elites on their own!"

"So you don't have any faith in us, do you?"

"After fifteen years of protecting you, I think I know exactly what you're capable of," Leo said, voice dripping sarcasm.

"Oh not that again," Raph said, throwing his hands up. "Fifteen years, fifteen years, enough! You don't have to do it anymore--"

"Apparently I do, if you're too...too...arrogant to think you three have miraculously improved in six months!" Iwillnothithim Iwillnothithim Iwillnothithim ran through Leo's mind.

"Oh, so it'd take a miracle, that what you're saying?"

"For you three..."

"You really don't think we can handle ourselves?" Raph hissed. "We get your ungrateful ass out of hell but we can't live without your guidance?"

"You hid behind me the entire damn time! It would've been great if you two hadn't been stuck in there with me."

"You had three months to get used to that place! And you still needed us!"

"Like hell, you only got in the way!"

"Yeah, you're so damn good, you never need backup! Yeah, right."

"If I need backup," and Leo said that sarcastically, "then Mike and Casey definitely need it. So why aren't you there with them?"

"'Cause they don't need a damn babysitter! Fine, you suffered all your life, whatever! Doesn't give you the right the treat the rest of us like children!"

"I'll stop when you stop acting like self-absorbed brats!"

"Why can't you ever just lay off--?"

"Because you three never consider your actions! I actually worried less in the game--"

"You were so happy there, maybe we should'a left you there!"

Leo's voice turned soft. "Maybe you should have."

"Whoa..." Raph paused. How the hell had this started? He didn't even remember what set them off now. "Whoa, Leo, wait..."

Willing to keep arguing, Leo didn't calm down. "None of you trust me, admit it. Everyone handles me like I might cut their head off."

"We never said nothing like--"

"There's only one borderline psycho in this room, right?"

"Oh come on," Raph said, "you know I didn't mean that."

"Like hell."

They could've kept going, but at that moment their shellphones simultaneously beeped. Already knowing what was coming, Leo flipped his open and found Mike backdropped by a dark brick wall, Casey crouched beside him.

"Guys, we need help!" Mike said. "There's at least twenty elites after us, and who knows how many ninjas."

Raph gaped at the amount of shuriken spraying the wall above them. "How on earth did you--"

"Not now," Leo said, instantly taking the weight of responsibility back. "Save them first, scold them later. Where are you?"

"Um...I'm not sure. We were running pretty fast and weren't really paying attention--"

"Fine, I'll be right there," Leo said, flipping the screen from Mike's face to the locator beacon. He didn't know what the buttons meant, but Donatello had shown him in what sequence to press each button, and after a moment he had the right screen up. He was already running for the door with Raphael behind him, hard pressed to keep up.

Back inside the lair, Splinter ventured into the main room, too late to stop his students. The argument hadn't lasted two minutes but he feared the long-term consequences. He spotted April coming out of the practice room and Donatello running out of his lab, a printed-out spreadsheet in one hand and his active shellcell in the other.

"What happened?" Splinter asked.

"Um..." April tried to remember how it started. "They were just talking at first, but then Leo got worried, and Raph brushed him off, so that upset Leo, and Raph got insulted, and then...oh, it was all bad."

"Master, April," Don said as he ran by, tossing the spreadsheet to April. "I gotta catch up to them! Talk to you on the phone!"

"Huh?" She looked after him, but he was already disappearing out the door. She glanced down at the diagrams and equations taking up most of the sheet. "This is a dna chart..."

Beside her, Splinter flipped on his shellphone and a moment later had Donatello on the screen. "My son?"

"Mike and Casey are pinned down by the foot clan," Don said as he ran, adjusting his bag onto his shoulder. "We're on our way to rescue 'em!"

"What's this dna you gave me?" April said, looking over Splinter's shoulder.

"It's Leo's," Don said. "Could you go over my results? I'm really hoping I'm wrong and you catch a mistake."

"Why?" She looked back at the diagrams and noticed the results were not mere genetic mapping, but a six month study of genetic drift. A chill came over her, and she vaguely remembered one of the charts on Stockman's clipboard. "Oh my God, Don...you're not saying that--"

"I think so, April. His eyes may just be the beginning."

TBC...

Author Note: I learned about maai in Samurai Deeper Kyo. Imagine a samurai in a shallow pond. Another samurai steps in. The ripples will alert the first samurai to the second's presence. The pond is like his maai, an aura of ki.


	5. 5

****

Part 5

The streetlamps were all shattered, Mike huddled with Casey as much for the safety behind the dumpster as a fear of running over broken glass. There was a way to walk over glass without being cut, Splinter made them do it all the time, but he'd never had a mess of elites on him at the same time. Another wave of shuriken peppered the wall above their heads, embedded into the bricks. Casey winced and pulled out one that had tumbled into his lap.

"Either we get out of here soon," Casey said, "or we're gonna end up pincushions."

"Hey, you find a way out and I'll be right behind you," Mike said. He listened for rushing footsteps or battle cries, but there was nothing, only the occasional whistle of metal flying overhead. "Although I think if they wanted to kill us, they'd of tried it by now."

"Not that I mind," Casey said, "but what're they waiting for?"

Mike frowned and tried to think despite another wave or throwing stars. "Well, if I had to guess, I'd say it's a trap and we're the bait."

"Trap?" Casey echoed. "Twenty elite out there, Mike. That's one heck of a trap."

"You got a better theory?" Mike snapped.

"Not really." Casey leaned back and sighed. "Sucks to be bait."

A sharp scream came from the darkness. Taking a chance, Mike stood and peered over the dumpster, and he spotted his brother running towards him. "Raph, you came!"

"Of course I came," Raph said. "You two okay?"

"Yeah, we're good." He winced as he heard another scream and looked down the alley, but he couldn't see anything in the darkness. "What's happening?"

"They sprang their trap," Raph said, "but I don't think they like what they caught."

In the street, Leo stood surrounded by nineteen elites and countless regular ninja, and he guessed there had to be a few cloaked foot tech as well. No matter. He held both swords out in an easy stance, his first elite face down at his feet, blood pooling on the pavement. Leo looked up at the pack.

"You wanted me," he said. "You got me. Who's next?"

A handful of regulars jumped in close around him. Once they all came within range, he spun, swords fully extended, cutting across throats, stomachs, faces. A few fell screaming, one even trying to crawl away with a hand clutched over his slit eyes. The rest fell or knelt, silent in shock, trying to hold their intestines in before collapsing.

"I guess you heard about what I did to the other elites," Leonardo said. He relaxed, one sword pointed at the ground and the other held over his shoulder as like Casey held his bats. None of them came any closer, glancing amongst themselves for reassurance. "They fell easily. Honestly, the hardest part was chasing one down when he ran from me. He's the one who lost his head."

He flipped his sword from behind his back and pointed it before him, indicating all of the ninja around him. "And you know, I can't let any of you leave to tell your master what I've become."

He sensed the throwing star flying towards his throat before he heard it. He waited for it to come closer before flicking his katana, striking it with the flat of the sword. It tumbled and came to rest on the pavement. With a heavy sigh, he lowered his head. "If you can't be bothered to come to me..." He looked up and started to smile. "Then I'll just have to come to you."

A head went flying before he'd taken two steps. April wasn't here. He disemboweled the nearest body and turned, dodging a laser beam and taking off the shooter's arm. The hot blood raised the temperature of the air around it a little. April wasn't here to watch him kill. In the dark, no one could see him kill, not even the dying. Bit by bit, he felt the collective ki of the enemies around him disappearing from his maai, making him feel like they drowned simply by coming too close.

Had he ever been so sensitive to the life force or others? A ripple told him a cloaked ninja was coming up from behind and he knelt suddenly, bringing both swords straight back over his head. He felt them hit the ninja's chest, tearing through the ribs and chopping through the heart and lungs. Electricity sparked as the suit short-circuited and he drew his swords out as fast as he could, feeling nothing more than a brief tingle. No, he'd never sensed a cloaked enemy before. Something had jacked his senses far beyond normal. He didn't think about it beyond enjoying the flying blood. Already it coated his swords and dripped down to the hilts, covering his hands.

A shame there were only thirty or so. He was used to much larger groups. And no guilt! Without responsibility, without guilt, without anyone watching and worrying that he'd turned into a monster himself, he could finally fight the way he was meant to. Their swords came close, their bursts of laser crackled above his skin, but nothing touched him. As intangible as the wind, as fast as a thought, and they couldn't even mark him. In the back of his mind he knew that if any of them managed to grab him, to get a hold on his wrist or arm, he'd be helpless.

If he didn't sever their hands. No fear. None, none at all. Blood flew into his face and he wiped it clear with the back of his arm. He knew he was getting cocky. He'd stopped aiming to kill awhile ago. Now he merely aimed to incapacitate, as his brothers called it. He called it dismemberment. An arm, a leg, a head, internal organs spilling onto the street--

A hand grabbed his wrist. Stunned, he looked up at the elite who'd caught him. Even the elite was surprised. It was simply dumb luck, without strategy or technique. Too surprised to react properly, the elite merely threw him to the ground, letting go in the process. Leonardo couldn't even resist the throw, instead rolling and coming back up on one knee.

Leo noticed then that the street had turned silent. This elite was the only one left. For a moment they stared at each other. And then the elite started to smile. Chills ran through Leo's spine. He knew. Dammit, just one lucky grab and the elite knew.

And armed with that knowledge, the elite turned and ran. Leo cursed and gave chase. To his surprise, he found his left shoulder throbbing with every step, forcing him to either deal with the increasing pain or slow down. The elite must have thrown him harder than he'd first thought. With his good arm he grabbed a throwing knife from his belt and raised it up, aiming for the elite's back. A second later, the elite turned a corner and disappeared.

Leo palmed the knife and kept running.

Left behind in the street, Raphael could only peer into the darkness after his brother. He cursed and looked back at Mike. At least he and Casey were all right.

Behind him, he heard the sound of an car's engine coming closer and turned, already backing into the darkest shadows. Instead of passing them, though, the van pulled up and Donatello leaned out the window.

"Thank God you're all okay. Did Leo...?"

"Kill everyone that wasn't us? Yeah." Without streetlamps, all Raphael had to see by was a neon ATM sign, which made the blood covering the street look like it was glowing. "God, it's even worse this time. His kills aren't even clean."

No one asked him what he meant by that. Casey didn't want to know and the other two could guess.

"But I don't get it," Raph continued. "He said he didn't like it, that he more pride in defeating them, not slaughtering them. Why would he...I mean, he didn't have to..."

"I don't think he has a choice anymore," Don said. "I left the paperwork with April, but I think Leo can't help killing. If I'm right, then it's a miracle he'd held out even this long."

"Whaddaya mean?" Mike asked.

Don opened his mouth to explain, then shook his head. "I'll explain on the way. Get in."

"Where we going?" Raph asked, coming around to the passenger side.

Once they were all in, Donatello revved the engine and took off down the streets. "After him. I've got his locator beacon keyed into the van. Three guesses where he's headed."

"He took off after the last elite," Raph said. "They could be going in circles."

"Nope, check it out." Donatello tapped the screen. "Foot headquarters."

"So it was a trap!" Mike said, leaning over Raph's shoulder. "Just to get Leo there."

"We already guessed that," Raph said, then looked at Donatello. "But what did you mean that Leo can't stop killing?"

Donatello took a deep breath, and everyone else in the van settled in with a sigh. Whenever Donatello started like that, everyone abandoned all hope of a short explanation. "You remember Stockman was originally using his pocket dimension to dump all his chemical byproducts without having to worry about environmental laws? I've looked over his old records. A lot of those were the usual chemicals, alkalines and oils, but he had a lot of radioactive material as well. He also had a lot of failed experimental mutagens, reminiscent of what he'd learned while working for Shredder."

"But dude, that mutagen worked quick," Mike said. "Wouldn't we all have changed immediately?"

"I don't think so. Stockman didn't have the exact compounds needed to make our kind of mutagen. He didn't have the exact equations and he definitely didn't have access to interstellar elements off our periodic table. He had to make do with substitutes, and because of that, he had a lot of botched experiments. Mix that with everything else he stuffed in that dimension and it's no wonder he had monsters breeding down there."

"Okay, but what does that have to do with Leo?" Raph asked.

There was no way to soften the news. Donatello winced as he told them. "Leo's genetic structure is drifting to match that of the things you called feeders."

Silence. Donatello rushed to explain before they could try to argue. "It started with his eyes. They're aren't injured, they just see differently. His hearing has become far more acute, and if his homicidal urges are anything to go by, he's got the same bloodlust the feeders have, he just isn't eating his kill."

"Yet," Raph grumbled. "Wait a sec, what about us? I was starting to adapt to that place, too."

"The genetic drift was starting to affect both of you as well, but you came out before it could become anything near permanent. He was in for three months. The changes had a chance to take hold."

"Wouldn't that have affected the humans with him?" Casey asked. "The black dude and the blonde chick? How come they ain't all 'grr, arg'?"

"You have to remember, we've been exposed to mutagen before. Felix and Chanta haven't. Their genetics are far more stable than ours." By their blank stares he noticed that he'd lost them and tried another tack. "In other words, it's easier to make mutants mutate further."

"Oh man," Mike said. "You mean Leo's a teenage mutant mutant ninja turtle?"

"Not if I can help it," Raph said. "There's gotta be a way to fix it, right Donny?"

"The solution might be rather simple. This started because he was exposed to feeder genetics. If we re-expose him to a high concentration of our genetics, he should come back to normal." He glanced down at the screen and brought the van to a halt, nearly throwing Mike over the seat. "We're ahead of him. He should be here any minute now."

Raphael nodded. "Let's go."

Two blocks away, Leo growled under his breath. This elite had led him over several city blocks, up a fire escape, down between two five-story buildings the hard way, and then back up a fire escape again, always turning a corner or running around an air conditioner unit so that Leo never had a clear shot with his knife. He only had one. He couldn't afford to miss. So he ran.

After the first block, he'd realized he was being herded somewhere, but he found he didn't care if there was an even larger ambush waiting for him. He could kill anything Shredder set in his path. So he'd gotten a little cocky, so what? Luck was blind and dumb. No one could plan for that. He'd just go for fast kills from now on. For now, he simply followed after his prey, leaping over the rooftops and occasionally using the streetlamps as stepping stones over streets.

Geez, how long was this elite gonna keep going? Leo barely recognized this part of the city. He hadn't looked up in several minutes, focusing solely on the elite. He forced himself to look up and get his bearings.

Well. Only half a mile from Foot headquarters. Couldn't say he was surprised. Of course that meant that in just a few seconds--

He let the knife fly. There were no more air conditioner units or protruding access stairwells or ventilation shafts. These buildings all had self-contained ventilation systems, and that meant the elite had run out of places to hide. With a satisfying thok, the blade sank deep into the center of his back and an inch out of his chest, and he fell forward onto the cement.

Slowing to a walk, Leonardo stepped beside him and knelt, yanking out the knife. As he wiped the edge off on the elite's clothes to clean it, he noticed how blood soaked his hands were. "What I wouldn't give for a little rain about now," he said, then looked down at the elite. "Nice try. Almost made it, too."

"My master..." the elite rasped, coughing up blood, "...is invincible. He will strike you down. He will...avenge all of our deaths."

Leo chuckled. "Hate to tell you this, the guy doesn't even know your name. You were just a throwing star to him." He slapped the ninja's back, ignoring the groan of pain. "But hey, if it's any consolation, I know how exactly how you feel. Even the knife in the back part."

"Is that so?" Raph asked.

Startled, Leonardo came to his feet and found his brothers all standing on the far side of the roof between him and the last block to the Foot headquarters. He took a deep breath and lowered his knife. "Nothing like your entire family thinking you're insane to make you feel welcome."

Raph shook his head. "I never said you--"

"Oh, right. Borderline psycho. Big difference." He looked over their heads at the old Foot headquarters. Somehow Shredder's tech soldiers had brought the electronics back to life after Donatello fried their circuits, although they hadn't put the red insignia back on. So Shredder had learned a little discretion. Or he was afraid of Leonardo's sword. The bloody message from yesterday probably hadn't left him feeling any more secure.

Blood. He smelled it coming out of the elite, now dead at his feet, but there was much more to be had inside that tower. Why put it off? He was just going to come back and kill them all anyway. He imagined torrents of blood rushing through the building like a river, pouring from slit throats, severed limbs, bodies cut neatly in two.

"Leo," Don started, "you're not insane. It's all because of Stockman's game. Look, I know I promised you weren't changing into one of those things but you are. We have to get you home now. Leo?"

"Save your breath," Raph said, looking at his older brother. "He can't hear you."

The entire foot clan. Leonardo nodded to himself. It shouldn't take very long, just one night. There were more levels, but they were much smaller than the levels in the game and many more ways to climb up. No survivors, not after they'd try to kill his friends, his...brothers? He looked up at his siblings as if he'd forgotten they were there, standing between him and the clan. "Out of my way."

With a familiar sinking feeling, Raphael drew his sais. "You told me that once. The answer's the same."

Leo frowned. He couldn't waste effort on his brother and risk storming the tower exhausted, which would happen if he had to fight Raphael and hold back his killing blows. He'd just have to take him out as fast as he'd done the elite. "I'm only doing this to protect you."

"You're losing yourself," Raph said. "I know you've been fighting it, but the thing inside you is getting stronger, Leo. You try to kill Shredder like this, you'll just end up dead."

"I might die tonight," Leo agreed. "But I'll take the entire clan with me, Saki included. And then we'll never have to worry about fighting them again. All that weight will be gone."

"That weight..." Raph whispered, thinking how much easier the burden of responsibility would feel without the foot. But at the cost of a brother, their death came at too high a price. "...is not yours to reclaim. It's mine now. You gave it up."

"I ran from it," Leo said. "Slight difference. You've let me take it up during fights. So I'm taking it back, just for the night."

"Leo--"

"Don't worry. When I come back, you can have it again. Now...back up, before I back you up."

Instead Raphael stood ready for an attack. Beside him, Mike and Donatello put their hands on their weapons, about to take them out.

Leonardo beat them to it, coming forward with his knife ready. Raphael, dead on the ground. Raphael, alive but spilling blood over the side of the roof. Raphael, without one arm. Raphael, with a slit throat. The images keyed in his mind and the desire to take Raphael apart piece by bloody piece surged through him. Part of him shuddered to even think of it, but a small part, growing larger every minute, relished the thought of fratricide and added his youngest brothers to the pile.

I have to get away from them, Leo thought, take this to Shredder. Yes, kill Shredder, kill the entire clan, they're our enemies, kill them all to protect these three--

Raphael deflected the knife from his arm, realizing too late that it was a feint. A punch to the head made him see stars and a roundhouse kick in his stomach sent him flying on top of Mike. And then Leo was gone, over the side of the building and out of their sight. It didn't take much effort to find handholds along the wall like window sills and cracks in the masonry and he landed easily on the ground. Without pausing, he used the shadows to hide from the few people on the street until he stood directly across from the tower, their front lobby still brightly lit with several people inside, from the secretaries at the desk to men waiting in their plush chairs to a few office employees walking back and forth between rooms. He watched them for a moment. No one ever went to the desk to ask a question, the secretaries never answered a phone and the office walkers simply made their rounds, never staying in an office for even a minute.

A trap, then, and all of them were Shredder's soldiers, perhaps even elites out of uniform. He put the knife away and took out his swords. Well, if they'd taken the trouble to prepare a trap, who was he not to spring it? With a deep breath, he waited for the street to clear.

They would die first. He'd have to do it somewhere out of sight so no one outside would see the blood. And then he'd turn off the lights to make it easier on himself. Killing so many people would be hard enough without the glare of florescent bulbs overhead. Finally the street was clear enough to pass. He crossed over and opened the front door.

TBC...


	6. 6

****

Part 6

The stars faded. Raphael found himself lying on top of one of his siblings and trying not to move his head. The pain in his stomach had faded to a dull throb, but his head pounded in time to his heart. The loud voices above him didn't help any.

"--do we do?"

"Calm down. We can't do anything if we panic."

"Leo just took down Raph! I wanna panic!"

"He didn't 'take him down', Mike. Raph just got the wind knocked out of him. He'll be fine--look, see, he's coming around already."

Raph didn't open his eyes for a moment, not wanting to do anything but lay still and hope the headache would go away, but his responsibilities lined up one after the other. Follow their brother into the tower, save him, and wrangle him back home for treatment because it was obvious Leo wouldn't come willingly. He took a deep breath and groaned. The headache wasn't going away. When Mike shook him impatiently, he sighed and opened his eyes.

"Dude...you okay?" Mike asked.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Raph muttered. "I fight him often enough. Why didn't I see that was a feint? Ow..."

"Well, that's what he's best at," Don said. "How's your head?"

"Still attached," Raph said. He took a deep breath. "I guess that's it. He didn't really fight us before but now...did you see the way his eyes changed?"

"Yeah, man, I totally thought he was gonna cut you open."

Donatello nodded. "I don't have the equipment to check brain waves, but I'm willing to bet that if his DNA is changing, then his neural pathways might be severely altered by now."

"How bad?" Raph asked.

"Obviously higher brain functions have been affected. From what we saw...he could be farther gone than I thought."

"Whoa, wait a second," Raph said. "If that's true, then how come Leo ain't trying to rip us apart? I mean, he knocked me out but he didn't kill me. "

"Maybe not, but he's worse than before." Donatello looked up at him. "I mean, he did just knock you senseless to get after Shredder. It could be he's felt like this for awhile, he just didn't want to hurt us. From the way he zones out during practice, I'd hypothesize that he submerged his lust for blood and only gave into it when he was alone."

"And now he's got a real enemy he can kill," Raph mumbled. "Hell, we even encouraged him."

"His feeder instincts will drive him to kill Shredder, but if he lapses too far into that mindless state, Saki will make quick work of him." Don exhaled and leaned against the wall. "His only chance is to keep a hold on himself long enough to survive his fight with Shredder and get away."

Raphael thought that over for a moment, then shook his head. "No way. He'll cut through so many foot ninja that he'll be too caught up in killing. His emotions'll run away with him. He'll lose if we don't get there in time." He cracked his knuckles and stared up at the dark foot tower. "Can you call up Splinter?"

"Yeah, sure," Donatello said, and took out his shellcell. After a few seconds, he had Splinter on the screen, as well as April and Casey looking over their master's shoulders. "Master Splinter? We kind of have a problem."

Raphael leaned on Donatello's shoulder and looked at the screen. "Leo's gone inside foot headquarters. I think it's a trap. We're about to go in and get him."

Splinter's eyes widened, but Casey beat him to the punch.

"What? Are you guys nuts? Last time you went in with April on the computer and Splinter was with ya and there was four of you, not three!"

"We don't have a choice," Raph started, then shook his head. "Look, I ain't got time to explain. We can't wait for help. I just needed to let you know what's going on."

"Raphael, your face," April said, reaching toward the screen as if she could touch him through it. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah..." Raph rubbed his bruised eye. "Just lost an argument with Leo's fist, that's all. We'll be home before the night's out. I promise."

"Raphael...be careful," Splinter said. "We don't know how the clan has changed. You must be prepared for anything. And you must protect your brothers."

"I will," Raph said, "all of 'em. See you in a few hours, master." He clicked off the phone and handed it back to his brother. Still shaking off the headache, he took the fire escape on the side of the building and led his siblings down to street level, hugging the shadows all the way to the base of the tower.

Instead of the bloody chaos he expected, the front lobby was empty. It seemed like the office was simply open late for the night shift. He even expected a janitor to cross in front of the glass windows at any moment. "This is the right place, right?"

"This is where the elite was headed," Don said, "and it's the old headquarters. Maybe Leo's inside somewhere?"  
"If Shredder took all this trouble," Mike said, "and it really is a trap, he wouldn't spring it in the lobby. He'd probably lure him in and jump him halfway up."

Raph looked at his brother in surprise. "Mike, you've been hiding a brain in that hard head."

Mike grinned.

Once they were sure the lobby was empty, they came through the doors and scanned the room for alarms, the buzz of tech ninjas, anything. The security cameras in the corners swept back and forth and the air conditioner hummed quietly, but they were alone.

"Weird. The lights are on," Mike said. "But no one's home."

"Leo's probably keeping them all busy," Raph said. "Don, any way of knowing which way to go?"

No answer.

"Yo, Donny?" He turned and found his brother standing by one of the closed doors. He stepped beside him and looked at him.

Donatello stared at the door leading to the stairway, watching a small puddle of blood spread out from under the door. Setting a hand on his brother's shoulder, Raphael nodded at him and opened the door. The secretaries, clients and employees all lay in a tangled heap at the foot of the stairs. After a few seconds, Raphael realized that he couldn't tell where one body began and another started not because they were in a jumble, but because they were in large pieces. The secretary's legs ended where the business man's torso started. Blood trickled down the staircase, dripping off the steps and railing like a slow fountain.

"Oh yeah," Mike said softly, "he's keeping 'em busy all right."

Careful not to slip, Raphael walked across the floor and knelt by the pile, poking his sai tip under an arm and lifting it a few inches. Mike winced and turned around while Donatello kept his hand on his shoulder to steady himself. Something metallic tumbled out onto the floor, and Raphael picked up a shuriken.

"Yup, definitely a trap," he said. "Leo beat her to the throw."

At the top of the stairwell, lights started clicking off one by one down each floor, until the foyer turned dark and every light went out of the building. Red emergency lights came on a moment later, but their power was obviously running low and flickered unsteadily. The stairway was more dark than light, and the blood glistened as it crept across the floor.

"The game," Mike whispered.

"Huh?" Don asked.

"The darkness, the blood...it's the game." Mike looked at him. "He's recreating the game."

They looked at each other for a moment, then slowly started their way up.

On the fifth floor, Leo watched the computer screen go dark. He didn't have Donatello's genius or even a basic understanding of the electrical gadgetry in the security room. He simply knew that if you cut enough wires, eventually the most complicated systems will become scrap. A little dismayed when the red emergency lights came on, he sighed and stretched. The last time he'd been in this tower, he'd felt excited. Now he felt empty, as if he'd been awake too long but couldn't fall asleep.

Something was wrong. He could feel it inside, like a worm chewing through his brain. Donatello had said something about changing on the roof, but he didn't remember it. It was something bad, he figured that much. And he couldn't stop the images in his head of his brothers butchered on the floor. He pressed a hand over his eyes as he shuddered, smearing his face with blood, but by now he hardly noticed any more blood. The hallways weren't dripping yet but the splatters of his kills had left him and the walls drenched.

Footsteps echoed towards the room. Time to go. He turned, pushing aside the bodies still seated at the console, and walked towards the door, dragging one sword on the ground so that it scraped, reminding him of a screamer's shriek. A handful of foot soldiers came at the door. One head, one arm, two sets of intestines and one upper torso plopped to the ground. A copper smell filled the hall as blood pumped out of the severed limbs. The ninja now missing an arm fell against the wall and screamed for several seconds. By the time Leo reached the end of the hallway, the screams had stopped.

After all the anticipation, Shredder's ninjas turned out to be a disappointment. Even the elites he could kill in a few seconds. If Shredder hadn't improved, he might make it home without a scratch. Not a drop of the blood covering him was his.

On the far end of the hall, a door flew open and he turned, expecting a dozen throwing stars to fly his way. Instead he spotted Raphael with Don and Mike behind him, all of them mesmerized by the amount of dead humans in his wake. He watched as they looked up and spotted him, and for a moment they simply stared at each other, Leo in frustration that he just couldn't ditch his younger brothers, his siblings in a mixture of concern and shock. Then Raphael started walking towards him, his look promising that he'd drag Leo out if he had to. Before they could catch up to him, he headed for the second stairwell just a few feet away. Behind him, he heard them whisper and heard their footsteps splashing through blood, and for a moment he wondered what he looked like to them, dragging one sword, head tilted slightly, a dark silhouette in a red field.

Once inside the stairwell, he shut the door and picked up one of the severed arms nearby, jamming it into the door's broad handle. A few seconds later the handle pushed on the arm, nearly breaking the stiff fingers, but the door would not open. Leo looked through the small glass window at Raphael. The red lights made his brother look as blood-soaked as himself, but the light also made his red bandanna glow. Added to his sibling's glare, Raphael looked like an enraged demon. His voice, muffled through the thick steel, sounded like he was underwater as he pounded against the door.

Time to go up again. He made sure to make plenty of noise as he climbed the stairs, drawing ninjas away from the main hallways and concentrating their attack on the stairs. Part of him did this to keep them away from his brothers. Part of him did it to keep a steady stream of people to kill and add to the blood flowing down the steps. It reminded him of a zen watergarden, with timed drips and groans echoing behind him.

The floors passed by in a blur. Everyone facing him wore a mask, making it easier to lose track of how many he'd killed. He felt almost like he was killing the same ninja over and over again.

Almost like his dreams, this heaven and hell wrapped up in a red stairwell. Felix and Chanta weren't here but he didn't need them, didn't even want companions on this trip. This was far more enjoyable on his own. He was beyond his enemies' abilities and he had an endless supply of bodies to kill, two for every step. He left them draped over the railing, sprawled on the steps, in heaps at each floor, and often tossed one or two down the center to fill the well with their screams until the crunch at the bottom echoed back up to him. One foot soldier came at him so fast he didn't have time to cut but rather raised his sword and ran it through his enemy's stomach, straining to hold him upright as the body sagged. Blood gushed over his hands and he stared into his eyes as the light left them, slowly turning into doll's eyes. He kicked the body off of his sword and stepped over it, heading for the next floor.

And then he was forced to stop. Someone had stacked heavy bricks and wreckage in his path, blocking off the next flight of stairs. He grabbed a broken pipe jutting out of the pile and yanked, but nothing moved. He tried to look around it and found it went up to the ceiling and around to the next floor. Nothing to do but enter this door. He figured there had to be another stairway or elevator or, if worse came to worse, a ventilation shaft. That he was being herded didn't bother him.

The slaughter continued. With the red lights and their black outfits, they looked like wraiths with white eyes. Two heads fell to the floor while blood spurted from the sliced arteries a few seconds before the bodies fell. A severed arm. Cut eyes. Slit throat. Spilling intestines. He intentionally slashed a ninja's chest and spun him around, splashing the walls and floor.

The corridor ended in an dark doorway. He went inside, not bothering to search along the wall for a lightswitch. The red glow from the hall reflected off long canisters in neat stacks. He walked further in, listening for any movement.

The door shut and the lock clicked. As he turned, bright lights came on, turning the room a dazzling white. He winced and put one hand over his eyes, and now that he couldn't see, he heard a soft hiss. He couldn't tell where it came from so he forced his eyes open, peering into the glare. A large mirror hung on the opposite wall. The rest of the room was filled with silver canisters as tall as himself. He figured that was where the hissing was coming from and he took a step towards them, intent on turning them off and then finding getting out. His heart started pounding and he grew lightheaded. He had to get out of here, every minute he stayed still let his brothers get higher up--

"Leo, where the hell are you!"

Raphael's voice? How on earth? That was impossible, his brothers should never have made it this high up so fast. He found himself torn between wanting to protect his siblings and wanting to hide so they couldn't force him home. If any of them managed to grab him, there was no way he could fight back. He stepped close to the locked door, hesitating. He had killed all the ninjas on this floor, right?

Screams. His brothers were screaming in pain, calling for him over the din of crashing steel. He grabbed for the door handle only to find it had no handle. With a sick lurch in his stomach, he pushed as hard as he could on the door, pounding on it as Mike's screams turned to a blood-drowned gasp. Donatello hit the door hard and fell silent. Raphael's scream turned into groan suddenly cut short. And Leo stopped breathing when he saw blood trickling in under the door.

Cold and shivering, he touched his hand to the puddle to see if it was real. His hand left a print that quickly filled in again. He backed away quickly, watching the blood spread across the floor. He couldn't breathe. He tried to gasp, to scream, make a sound, anything. Instead he trembled and fell to his knees, unable to look away. God no, not possible, they can't be, no no no no no--

He finally found his voice and screamed.

Only a few feet away, on the other side of the two-way mirror, Saki stood and watched, tilting his head as Leonardo reacted to whatever he'd seen. He couldn't imagine what had driven the turtle to such an outburst, but it satisfied him to watch. He reached up and touched his throat, lightly running his fingers over the faint scar, the only evidence of his decapitation. The headless elite in the alleyway had not gone unnoticed. No one toyed with the Shredder. No one.

But Leonardo was calming now, he noticed. Whatever hallucinations his trap had spawned, his enemy was slowly collecting himself. He tightened his hands into fists. Let the turtle fight his way up another few floors. They'd have their fight soon enough, though it cost him dear in soldiers. This vicious fighting was new to his enemies, and he wondered what had prompted the black mask, but no matter. He'd have to remember to ask before he killed him.

As Saki planned his duel with an emotionally shaken ninja, Leonardo's shaking ceased as if he'd flipped a switch in himself. He raised his head and breathed normally. Shredder couldn't see his eyes under his mask but they were blank, unseeing. Leonardo no longer needed them. And as he stood up, grasping his katana less like a sword and more like a long claw, he heard someone breathing on the other side of the mirror. He tilted his head back, popping a few joints, then turned.

TBC...


	7. 7

****

Part 7

Back inside the stairwell, Leonardo's brothers had forced the other door open, using their weight to snap the arm holding the long handle up. They carefully made their way over pieces of foot soldiers strewn across every step. Raphael lead the way, kicking arms and legs and occasionally complete bodies down the center of the stairwell while Donatello and Mike came up side by side, not wanting to be the last one. Although the red lights were enough to see by, the shadows were darker and the still-dripping blood gave the illusion that the walls were crawling. Every now and then a body spasmed or turned on its own as they passed. When one actually groaned, Mike stepped closer to Donatello.

"It's okay," Don whispered. "It's a rattle. It's normal, just air escaping and the muscles contracting. Sometimes bodies'll sit even up."

"Not helping," Mike said softly. "This whole thing's a big horror movie. I keep thinking I'll turn around and there'll be a bunch of zombies coming after us--"

"Mike--" Don started.

"--or the dead chick in that movie's gonna be climbing up the stairs--"

"Mike--" Don said a little louder.

"--or a big monster with claws and fangs is eating the bodies and decides it wants something fresher--"

"Mike!" Don and Raph both yelled, startling him.

He looked down and fell silent. Donatello put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.

"It's okay. Nothing bad's gonna happen. We just have to get Leo out of here, that's all."

"If he lets us," Mike said, gesturing at the gore they climbed through. "Look at all this. Does he even know what he's doing? Can we bring him back at all?"

"I don't know," Don said. "We won't know until we get him home and start blood transfusions. It could still be awhile before he's anywhere near normal again."

"We'll get him home," Raph said. "He might not come willingly, but at least he won't hurt us. Worse case scenario, we have to stop Shredder while we get Leo."

Mike frowned. "How we gonna do that? Leo's the one who beat him last time."

Raph didn't look back. "We'll manage." Somehow, he thought, but he didn't say it out loud. Somehow he would find his older brother, get him away from Shredder, kill Shredder if he had to, drag Leo back down through the tower, and get him home. And keep Mike and Don safe. And make sure no one saw them. And stop any foot ninjas who weren't dead from attacking them on the way out.

He kicked another body out of the way. Only six months and already he could see why Leo had run from responsibility. It wasn't fair to put all of it on one turtle. And now he didn't have his big brother to lean on during a fight. One on one fighting was no problem, and neither was a fight with all four of them, but fighting while he had to watch out for the other two...Don wasn't a fighter at heart, and even though Mike could do well on his own, his playfulness often got him into trouble. He had no doubt that Mike had tried to give the elites after him and Casey the run around and instead got both of them backed into a corner.

Funny, being in charge had seemed like something he could rub in Leo's face forever.

A scream echoed down the stairwell from a higher floor. Raphael froze. That hadn't been a scream of fear, it was more like a grief-stricken wail. It reverberated through the metal, sending shockwaves like tangible anguish through the tower, passing over them and down into the darkness of the bottom floors, dying into nothing.

"That sounded like Leo," Mike whispered.

"How could you tell?" Donatello asked. "It didn't sound like him at all."

"I felt it through my chest," Mike said, putting his hands over his plastron. "It was so loud..."

No longer caring about the bodies, Raphael began stepping over and on top of the dead, stabbing the ones on the rail with his sai and using them for leverage as sloshed through the gore. When he didn't hear his brothers right behind him, he looked over his shoulder and found them struggling over the dead, still loathe to touch the corpses.

"Dammit, get over it," he yelled at them. They looked up in surprise at how sharp his voice was. "Leo's up there, God knows what's happening, and you're worried about a little blood?"

"Hey, lay off!" Mike snapped. "It's hard to climb through all this without falling. You want us to break our necks?"

Raphael growled but couldn't argue. He only wished his siblings had edged weapons to give them a bitter grip on the bodies. "Just hurry up," he said, but he couldn't afford to wait for them. He set a much faster pace and left them behind, going so fast he often slipped and hit his knees or legs or arms against the hard steps and railing.

A few minutes later, there was a loud popping noise, and a minute after that, a hellish shriek. Raphael went cold but didn't stop climbing. He recognized that sound, not from his brother but from dark corridors in a blood-soaked pocket dimension. Unless Shredder possessed some of Stockman's leftover experiments, Raphael knew that something inside his brother had broken.

"Just hang on," he whispered, "just hang on, Leo. I'm coming. I'm on my way." He slipped again and hit the steps hard, landing face first in a mutilated chest. He coughed and leaned up on his elbows, shaking off blood as he caught his breath. Four or five floors beneath him, he heard his brothers following in his footsteps.

With a grunt he pushed himself back to his feet and continued up. The cold blood was drying on his skin, itching and making him shiver. He didn't want to think what the rest of the smells around him were. By now some of the bodies had been dead long enough to completely relax and empty out whatever bowels they still had. He grit his teeth and moved on. Soon he'd be home with his family and Leo on the way to recovery, and then he could take a shower. How can I even be thinking of a shower right now? he wondered. He wondered if Leonardo was as covered in blood as he was now or if his brother even noticed anymore.

Five minutes earlier, the Shredder watched the turtle comport himself, bringing himself back from whatever hallucination that had caused him to scream. And then slowly the turtle turned, staring at the glass. Or at least Saki thought he was staring. The black eyes made it difficult to be certain. Was Leonardo staring directly at him?

One moment Leonardo stood facing the mirror, simply breathing. The next, glass exploded into the small observation room. Saki shielded his face and backed up, shards crunching under his boots. He watched as Leonardo landed on all fours and rose slowly, ignoring the broken glass sparkling on the floor. Despite a brief respite from killing, he still dripped with blood. They faced off, neither moving, and Saki became aware of a low noise, hardly audible as the last bits of glass dropped off the mirror. It grew louder until he realized that Leonardo was growling. What on earth had the turtle hallucinated? And what had happened in the months since he'd died? This couldn't be the same creature he'd fought before.

Regardless, this room left him little space to fight. He slipped a hand into his belt and grasped a smoke bomb, but after a second look at Leo's mask, he switched to a flash bomb instead. He threw it to the floor and dodged backwards just as Leonardo leaped. As light exploded through the room, he pushed open the door and ran, hearing Leonardo's pained cry behind him.

He was all the way to the elevator halfway down the hall before he looked back. Smoke wisped out of the room, trailing along the edges of the door. There was no sound and he wondered if he'd incapacitated the turtle already and the fight was over. Then he heard a loud scraping noise, like metal being cut, and Leonardo walked out dragging his sword behind him. One hand covered his eyes as he staggered sideways, hitting the wall with his shoulder before he steadied himself. With slow, purposeful steps, he walked towards Saki, never looking up, dragging his sword.

Saki pushed the elevator button again. The beeps as it passed each floor came so slow that he looked up to make sure it was moving. When he looked back, Leonardo was only a few steps away and swinging. Saki stumbled backwards and brought his metal arm guard up, barely deflecting Leo's sword. He pushed the sword away but Leo was already bringing his arm back, slicing towards Saki's face.

As fast as he dodged, Saki still felt the wind from the blade pass over his eyes. He fell to all fours and used his arms to brace himself as he mule-kicked Leonardo. The hit threw Leo back down the hall, but as Saki watched, Leo turned in mid-air and landed on his feet, his sword hand outstretched to balance himself. Saki stared. It wasn't that Leo had righted himself but the way he'd done so that disturbed him. Instead of a steady turn, Leonardo had thrown one shoulder around, practically jerking himself about face and landing catlike without even watching where he was landing.

The elevator door finally opened but the Shredder couldn't help staring at Leonardo as he stood up, his head still bowed, breathing easy. From his past encounters with him, Saki knew Leo should have been panting for breath, nervous, always on the defensive. The loss of his normal eyes was unnerving enough. Saki wondered if he tore off that mask, would Leonardo's black eyes would remain?

He stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the top floor. The doors closed quickly, and he heard Leonardo running towards him. For a moment he thought Leo might make it and he even saw the tip of the sword just as the doors closed. The turtle pounded on the doors and raked the sword across their metal surface, but he couldn't get through. Saki let go a breath and leaned against the wall.

He bolted upright when Leonardo screamed. Unnaturally loud and shrill, it sounded less like his enemy and more like an enraged animal. The scream echoed through the elevator and made the metal walls vibrate. It even reverberated through his chest and made his whole body run cold. As it died away, Saki found himself breathing a little faster. He put a hand to his forehead and actually found beads of sweat. With a curse, he slammed his fist against the wall.

Damn mutant. Even in deadly combat, he'd never felt fear. Why had that scream frightened him? He'd faced thousands of men before but...Saki looked up. Men. He'd faced men before, but that scream sounded like an animal deprived of its meal. He'd never been on the menu before. His lips pressed into a thin line. He'd make that mutant pay for making him afraid.

The shriek of twisting metal drowned Leonardo's scream and Saki wondered what was happening down there. The elevator was nearly fifteen floors up already. Why would the turtle bother to pry the doors open only to climb more than a hundred feet, especially when there was another stairwell down that hall? The noise stopped suddenly. The only other sound was the elevator's steady hum. He looked up at the row of numbers across the top of the door and watched as they clicked one by one. Soon he would reach the top floor and then he'd show that creature the meaning of fear.

Somewhere around the fiftieth floor, he felt soft vibrations in the elevator walls. With every passing floor they grew stronger, as if something constantly struck the shaft, coming closer with each strike. After seeing Leonardo's previous jump, the answer was obvious. Leonardo had forced his way in and was coming for him. Somehow he was coming up the sheer walls. Saki drew his sword. The elevator now seemed very cramped.

Back inside the stairwell, Raphael turned the corner on the last floor, nearly colliding with the mass of debris and mortar blocking the next flight. He stared at the pile of bricks and metal pipes, pausing to catch his breath. No way Leo had gone through that, he figured. That left only the door slightly ajar beside him. He tried to push it the rest of the way but something on the other side was stuck against it. With a grunt he put all of his weight against it and shoved, squeezing through the narrow space.

When he came around to the other side, he saw two foot ninja on top of each other in a heap, their crumpled bodies bracing the door. He bent and grabbed one's shirt, yanking the body out of the way so his brothers would be able to pass through. The body flopped sideways like a rag doll and air rattled out of its lungs. Raphael looked around. From the positions of the dead, Leonardo had killed them before they could get far. Some of them still held their throwing stars and swords. The first ninja must have been hiding on the ceiling and been cut apart, falling on top of the one behind the door before Leo impaled him. Stepping over and on top of them all, Raphael finally coming to the last door. When the handle wouldn't turn, he kicked it in.

Silver canisters lined the wall. A faint hiss came from one of them and he stepped closer, one hand over his mouth as he held his breath. Experience with Donatello's experiments had taught all of them not to breathe in when strange gasses filled the air. He turned the small handle to the right, tightening the valve. At once the hissing stopped.

That done, he stepped over to the shattered mirror and looked inside. It reminded him of the police interrogation rooms he saw on Mike's cop shows. Gingerly stepping over the broken glass, he waved away the last wisps of smoke lingering inside. The smoke smelled vaguely of gun powder, probably the source of that popping noise he'd heard earlier. Since there was no damage, he guessed it was like one of Leo's flash bombs.

"Which means Leo couldn't see," Raph said to himself. He followed the trail to the next hallway and gasped.

The elevator doors were halfway open, but unlike the rest of the tower, this hallway held no traces of blood save for the smears on the sides of the elevator doors. He put his hand on them and found them to match his own handprints. Footprints like his own, stained red but drying brown, stopped at the doors and repositioned themselves to better brace for the struggle to pry them open.

"He forced them," Raph said to himself, matching Leo's stance. It put one shoulder against one door and his hand against the other. He easily pushed them a few more inches, but he was amazed that Leonardo had been able to do so. Where had he found the strength after months of struggling with mere paint cans? There was a stairwell not ten feet from the elevator. Why hadn't Leo taken the stairs again?

"Raph," Mike yelled from the room with the canisters, "Raph, wait up!"

Raphael stood back from the doors and watched his brothers run towards him, both of them cleaner than himself. "Took you long enough."

"Raph," Don said, grabbing his shoulder and looking at his eyes, "you didn't breathe in any of that stuff, did you? Are you seeing anything strange?"

"Besides this whole place?" Raph said. He batted Don's hand away. "What gives?"

"Those canisters are filled with tryptamine alkaloids," Donatello said. When Raphael didn't react, he explained. "It's a hallucinogen, psilocybin to be exact, the same stuff you find in amanita mushrooms. I don't know how they managed to make it airborne but--"

Raph groaned and looked at the floor. "You mean Leo's even more out of his mind now?"

"Maybe. If the canisters were open before, Leo might have breathed in a lot. I don't know for sure how it would affect us--"

"The first scream," Raph said softly. "That's what it was. He must've seen something really bad." And after all this time, he could hazard a good guess as to what.

"Hey," Mike said, "what's with the elevator?"

"Leo went in," Raph said. "I don't think he'd of gone through the shaft if the elevator was there. He's chasing someone."

"Three guesses as to who," Don said.

"So now what?" Mike asked. "Up after 'em?" He started for the open shaft but Raphael grabbed his shoulder and stopped him.

"Uh-uh," he said. "There's no way I'm climbing up in the dark after him, not now. We'll take the stairs 'till we find another elevator. Let's go."

As they entered the next stairwell, Mike glanced around the walls and steps. There were no bodies, no splatters of blood. Without corpses along the way, he felt like they were in the wrong place. "How'll we know where they are?" he asked.

"I'll bet they're going all the way to the top," Raph said. "Shouldn't be so hard now without anything to trip over."

A loud pop made them all look up. Several floors above them, a red florescent light flickered wildly and then went out with another pop. A few seconds later, the next floor went dark, and so on down towards them.

"Aw shell," Mike winced, "it really is just like that movie."

"Donnie--" Raph started, but Donatello was already digging through his bag.

"Way ahead of you," Don said and pulled out three flashlights. "It'll be a little awkward holding them, but at least we'll be able to see." He handed them out just as the lights around them went out, going down as if sinking.

With all three lit, they had a circle of light that ended at Mike's heels. Michelangelo quickly stepped next to Donatello and refused to look down the stairs. They followed just behind Raphael, careful not to lag. Mike glanced at Donatello.

"If the power's out, are we gonna have to climb all the way up these stairs?"

"I hope not," Don said. "With any luck the elevators have a different power source. Either way, I doubt we'll be able to take this one stairway up. We'll have to find another one when this section of the tower ends."

Mike nodded once but he couldn't help wondering how his big brother was doing if the elevator he was following suddenly stopped.

Several floors higher, Shredder paced his small compartment. The vibrations were just a few feet below him but he had no way of stopping Leonardo. For a moment the soft thuds stopped, and then a heavy weight hit the bottom of the elevator. The turtle was right beneath him now. He stared at the floor, wondering if Leonardo would find a way through the solid undercarriage. With any luck he'd be trapped under the elevator when it stopped, and then Saki could simply send it back down to the last floor, crushing his enemy beneath it.

Halfway to the next floor, the lights flickered and went out as the elevator slowed to a stop. He froze. Had they lost all power now? Damn elevator, it was between floors. He could force the doors open easily but knew that the moment he did so, the turtle would be right on top of him. Leo might even come up fast enough to back him into the elevator itself. Maybe he could escape out of the hatch above--

The doors started to open anyway. Leonardo was coming through regardless. He watched them open an inch at a time, listened to the metal grind in protest. White light gleamed through the small opening. At least this floor still had real electricity and not red backup lights. Saki gripped his sword a little tighter and waited. Whoever actually opened the door would be vulnerable either to a first attack or to allowing his enemy to slip by. If he could get through the doors first, he could escape the elevator, turn and dodge Leonardo's attack. The space between the doors was nearly wide enough now. He knelt and put his hands on the doors, feeling the vibrations as Leonardo strained to open them. The same moment that the vibration stopped, Saki sprung forward, grazing his shoulders on the doors but getting through, rolling on the floor and coming up with one sword ready.

A sword crashed down on his and slid down to the hilt, nearly knocking it out of his hand. Saki pushed against Leonardo's katana, throwing him back and following after with a slash towards Leo's throat. Instead he gashed the wall as Leonardo rolled away, coming back up with a single cut towards his face that missed. With both swords to one side and too close to stab at each other, Shredder took the opportunity to reach out his hand, snatching off Leonardo's mask and tossing it aside.

Leonardo yelped and backed away, one hand over his eyes. Saki stepped backwards despite himself. As fast as Leo had moved, Saki had still glimpsed his eyes, as pitch black as the mask itself. For an instant he wanted to know what had happened to his enemy, curious as to what had driven him from the light, but the instant passed almost immediately. He could ask the other three turtles when they arrived. Right now he had the chance to destroy the one who'd nearly killed him and he advanced on his enemy, chuckling lowly as Leonardo stumbled backwards, trying to find his way back to the darkness of the elevator shaft. Blinded and appearing to be in pain, Leonardo couldn't see Saki's katana raised into the air, aimed at his throat.

TBC...


	8. 8

****

Part 8

His eyes burned. Leonardo held one hand over them as if they might melt in the hot light. He heard Shredder's footsteps coming closer and backed away, putting his other hand on the wall to steady himself. The darkness of the elevator shaft could have been miles away for all the good it did him. The light slipped through his fingers and burned like acid.

But even as the pain fogged his senses, it cleared his mind of the simultaneous hate and joy he'd felt since arriving at the tower. Animalistic blood lust vanished and left him empty inside; loss took its place. His brothers were dead. His blindness had killed them. The blood on him, no longer scalding hot, stung like ice. This wasn't what he'd wanted. This wasn't supposed to happen. Shredder--

His body reacted before his mind, recognizing the powerful ki invading his own and throwing himself to the right. The sword stroke missed his throat but slashed deep into his left shoulder, cutting down his arm. He cried out and stumbled away again, one hand clamped over the wound and blood welling over his palm. He heard Shredder's laughter behind him and kept moving, blindly backing away until he backed into a wall. After a moment he realized that he'd gone the wrong way, moving further into the light.

Lost and disoriented, he had no choice. He opened his eyes and through the hellstorm of light saw that he was standing where one hallway joined a second, forming a T. Each way ended in a blur of white, so there was no way to tell where the other path led. He arbitrarily chose left and ran, narrowing his eyes to slits. With most of the light blocked, he could make out the lines of the walls and the brightest spots on the ceiling, which he figured had to be the lights. There was no time to smash them, though. Shredder followed close behind, laughing.

Most of the doors were locked. He tried each one that he felt but none of them opened. If he couldn't find any escape, he'd have to turn and face Shredder, little better than suicide. Thank God there weren't any ninjas on this level. Had he killed them all? Or was he simply on a higher floor than Saki had planned? Finally a door opened and he went in, slamming it shut. He found a latch and turned it, locking the door. It wouldn't keep Saki out for long, but it was better than nothing.

The room's lights were out. His eyes still felt like acid had been poured on them, but at least now the fire had been put out. He found the lightswitch and sliced the wall a few inches above it, severing the wires so the lights couldn't come on again, then looked around. If this hadn't been Saki's tower, he would have thought it was a normal office. File cabinets and desks lined up in neat rows, and the building's outer glass wall gave him a clear view of Manhattan.

There was no time to stop and look at the city. He needed to buy himself more time and distance between him and Saki. One by one, he tipped over file cabinets, spilling paperwork across the carpeted floor. Some were too heavy to push so he flung open their drawers and pulled out reams of material, working his way backwards to the air conditioning vent in the wall. There was nothing he could do for his arm except hope the bleeding would slow soon.

Metal spikes drove through the door, slicing it off its hinges. As the door fell forward, Leonardo took out all of his flash bombs and threw them to the floor between them. He turned his back and shut his eyes as the lights went off, filling the center of the room with smoke. Flames shot up from the burned paper and quickly spread across the floor, turning the room orange.

Leonardo didn't wait to see how Shredder handled the fire. He punched his hand through the grate and tore it out, wincing as the metal wires cut his knuckles, and climbed inside the vent. Up he went, easily scaling the sheer surface. His hands found the dents made in the aluminum by long use. When he couldn't find a handhold, he made one, beating the sides in. He went up faster than he expected, creeping like a spider with no trouble at all. His body knew instinctively how to move through sheer tunnels. Traveling in complete darkness, he stopped when he found another grate. He kicked it out and emerged in a darkened stairwell.

The doors all had narrow windows in them, letting him see which floors were still lit and which ones were safe. The one beside him was bright, giving off just enough light to bother his already sore eyes. He looked over the railing to see if he could tell how far down the building had power, but instead he spotted three rays of light several stories below. Two moved steadily while the third waved behind them, like someone scanning for threats from the rear.

The light beside him went out. At first he thought that floor had lost its electricity, but when he looked over, he saw Saki blocking the window, his metal armor glittering. Leonardo made his choice instantly. He couldn't go down, so he leaped the railing and landed in the middle of the next flight of stairs, pivoting and leaping for the next flight as Saki kicked the door in and gave chase.

With his new agility, Leonardo easily outpaced Saki, leaping the stairs instead of climbing them. His hands found purchase on smooth steel and his body compensated for his relative weakness, using his own centrifugal force to keep him balanced as he turned in midair. He didn't need to rely on both arms, favoring his slashed arm and only using one to guide himself. Despite his lead, though, he felt the first cold edge of panic with every floor they passed. Each door was brightly lit. Had he only knocked out power for the lower half of the building?

The stairwell abruptly ended. The final door was also well lit and Leonardo turned, about to retreat, but Shredder was already turning the corner, claws at the ready. There was no way to go back down and only a bright light before him, so he closed his eyes and pushed through the door. If the light was going to blind him anyway, he might as well avoid the pain. Using his maai was a last resort, one he didn't want to use, but he had nothing left.

The floor was a single room, probably a training room to tell by the muted echo. Without his eyes, he could only sense the outline of the walls, not the locations of any doors or the lights or even if there were any windows. The door opened again and he turned, drawing his swords and taking a defensive stance.

Shredder paused. Something was different. Between the elevator and now, the turtle's demeanor had changed again. The black eyes were shut but every thing else, the defensive posture, both swords out, the nervousness, all told him that this was his old enemy, not the new animalistic one. Both were dangerous, but this one inspired a different fear. This was the one that had taken his head. Perhaps he shouldn't have torn off the blue mask.

"What's the matter?" Saki asked. "Can't stand the light?"

Leonardo didn't answer. He couldn't afford to trade barbs. All of his concentration centered on his maai, the circle of his ki pulsating around him and the ripples Shredder sent through it. There was a wave, like a great force plunging towards him with two sharp thrusts from both sides, and Leonardo flipped backwards, bringing one sword up as he landed and using the other as a counterbalance.

Saki's dual slashes missed and he nearly walked into Leo's sword, dodging it at the last second and escaping with a small scratch on his chestplate. He tried a swift backhand that left him off balance when Leonardo slid under the stroke, nearly taking his arm off in the same move. Backing away a few steps, Saki reconsidered his enemy. Previous fights had shown him that Leonardo preferred quick, clean kills, not these vicious, potentially maiming cuts. This new blend of both defense and cruelty wasn't more dangerous than before, but a mistake held heavier consequences. He couldn't afford to cut and slash like before. What the hell was going on in that turtle's head? Couldn't he just pick a personality and stick with it?

For his own part, Leonardo stayed tense and alert. His ki gave the world a feeling of being deep underwater, and Saki's movements were only discernible by his ripples and waves, but they were clearer than he ever thought possible. He saw his enemy's labored breathing, heard his heartbeat, noticed every twitch and shift of his boots. The room became clear, that they were in its center, that there were four support pillars spaced evenly throughout, and that one wall felt so different, smooth where the others were rough, that it had to be made of glass.

He smiled. To hell with his eyes. Didn't need them. His prey stood before him and he could hear Saki's heart beating faster and faster, hear the blood pulsing through him, hot and sweet and thick, and all he had to do to get it was cut it out of Shredder's chest. He lunged, screaming, swords held up like claws.

Back on the stairwell, three flashlights shone up the stairs, but already the echoes of the heavy footfalls were fading. Whoever had been running around up there had disappeared again. Raphael picked up the pace, rounding the tight corners almost too fast to keep the flashlight focused on the steps. The people upstairs could have been foot ninjas, but they hadn't seen any for so long that he figured any survivors had seen the slaughter and run away. And the way one of the unknowns had been leaping around and the other had been running, Raphael figured one was chasing the other.

Leaping stairs, climbing a sheer elevator shaft, the scream earlier, all convinced Raph that his brother wasn't simply turning into a feeder. Screamers, Stockman's smaller genetic monsters with four legs, were the only creatures in those dark tunnels that scaled walls so easily. Even the giant demons couldn't climb without punching through walls with claws bigger than his hands. Raphael began to despair of bringing their elder brother back from the nightmare he'd become.

"Raph!" Don cried just a few feet behind him. "Wait!"

Raphael stopped and whirled, about to snap an insult back, when he spotted the orange glow Donatello had noticed. He came back to his brother's side, looking through the window in this floor's door. Flames filled the other side, melting the ceiling and eating through the walls. Smoke trickled under the door. Raph glanced at his brother.

"Why aren't the sprinklers going?" Mike asked. "That floor's got lights. Shouldn't it have power?"

"Don...?"

"I don't know," Donatello answered. "Some things just might not be working. Guys, we don't have long. If there's anything really combustible up here, this whole floor could go."

"And then what happens?"

"If one floor goes..." he held his hand out flat, palm down, then dropped it an inch, an inch, an inch. "You've seen how towers fall."

Raph nodded once. "We gotta go. Now." He took a deep breath and started up the stairs again. Halfway to the top he heard the faint sound of clashing metal. The higher he went, the clearer it came, the familiar crash of sword on armor. At least his brother was still alive and fighting, but for how long? Raphael felt like he was running through sand, like the stairs just got longer and longer. Round a corner, a flash of light from the door, darkness again, round a corner, flash of light, dark, light, dark, light, with the wild flickering of the flashlights around him. Whatever the outcome tonight, he knew he'd be visiting this moment in his nightmares for weeks to come.

The final door came so suddenly he ran into it, pushing it wide open and stumbling into a vast chamber. As he came through, the lights flickered and went out as the fire below ate through the electrical cords. Only the city lights through the floor length windows gave him a murky view of a metal floor, metal walls, and four support struts holding the ceiling. Shredder hadn't completed the renovations of his tower yet; this part was still unfinished.

And there in the middle of room, Leonardo and Saki sent sparks shooting through the darkness. Raphael froze for a moment. Even at this distance, he saw that his brother's eyes were shut. He wondered if his brother was back to normal for now, but his stance and the way he used his swords erased that hope. To fight like this, Leonardo had taken the most primal sense of ki, his maai, and merged it with the feeder instincts, creating an animal fighting style bent solely on his enemy's destruction. On the nature programs Donatello loved, Raphael had seen animals that killed for pleasure, and here he saw one more. When Saki dodged a slice aimed at his leg, Leo screamed in rage.

Raphael shut his eyes tight for a second. There would be no reasoning with his brother now. He glanced over his shoulder at his brothers just now catching up. "You two, find a way out of here."

"What?" Mike asked. "But we're so high up--"

"I know," Raph said. "Just do it." He drew his sais. All he could do was distract Shredder from gaining any advantage, and when he found an opportunity, steal Leonardo from the fight. Leaving his brothers to work a miracle, he ran in close, surprising Saki who rolled out of both turtles' reach and came back to his feet well away from them.

Locked in a bloodlust, Leonardo felt the presence of another creature in the room, hostile and dangerous to tell from its movements. His first target was out of reach so he turned his attention to this new one, lunging with a cross slash. When it leaped over him, he turned and brought his sword with him, just missing its back as it sprang forward again, well out of reach.

Raphael breathed hard and took another step back. His run upstairs had exhausted him and Leonardo was completely insane. His earlier despair weighed heavier on him. This was impossible. How could he bring him back? He couldn't fight both his brother and the Shredder, they would be stuck fighting in circles until the tower crumbled beneath them. He groaned and brought his sais up in defense. There had to be a way, he just hadn't found it yet.

"Looks like he doesn't remember you," Shredder growled, breathing just as hard.

"Shut up!" Raph snapped.

"This is almost worth the trouble he's cost me," Shredder continued, goading him. "I will have the pleasure of watching him kill you before I kill him."

"Like hell! He killed you last time, he'll do it again!" Raph glanced back at his brother, who hesitated between his two targets. "Even if he don't know what he's doing," he said softly.

Leonardo chose, moving the instant he decided. The stronger ki of his first prey drew him like a flame, that and the strong beat of his heart. It pounded so loud that Leo could hardly hear anything else, not even the sound of his claws scraping on Saki's skin. Shredder's blood rushed like a raging river, roaring in his ears and whetting his appetite. His bloodlust overwhelmed his anger, making him forget why he'd been angry in the first place. His world shrank into darkness and the heart beating for him.

Shredder's gauntlet blade lanced through his hand and he cried out, dropping his sword. A second blade cut down his uninjured arm, slicing so deep it felt like cold fire. His maai became a haze and the other two kis blurred, the stronger one sweeping over him like bright, burning light. He felt the second creature moving towards them, too slow to affect the outcome, and he stumbled towards his enemy.

Raphael screamed and ran towards them, but even as he moved he knew he'd be too late. Shredder drew his other arm back, ready to punch his metal claws into Leonardo's side. With his brother fallen against him, the strike was all too easy. He couldn't look away as Shredder struck, driving his arm forward.

They'd both forgotten how fast Leonardo could move. Without thinking, he reached up and plunged his hand into Saki's chest, using speed and sharp claws to compensate for his weakness. The shock of a hand tearing between his ribs halted Saki's strike before his blades sank more than an inch into Leo's side. Blood welled up in Saki's mouth and he spit blood over the mask. Trying to tear himself away, he pushed Leonardo as hard as he could and stumbled several paces back against a support pillar, one hand over the gaping hole in his chest.

Directly opposite him, Leonardo held his heart in one bloody hand. Exhausted, he collapsed to the floor, dropping the heart. It rolled and came to rest at Saki's feet. Shredder's eyes widened as he stared at it ,and he put one hand out towards it, as if he might take it back and replace it in his chest. With a soft groan he fell to his knees, then fell completely forward, dead before he hit the floor. Raphael let go a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Only after several seconds of watching, waiting for Shredder to leap up like some movie monster and unconvinced even when nothing happened, he warily knelt beside the body and nudged it, then turned it over. Shredder's eyes, wide and distant, stared at nothing. The gaping wound no longer even bled.

Without Shredder to worry about anymore, Raphael started to notice the temperature in the room rising. He frowned. It wasn't just warm. It was turning uncomfortably hot. He looked down and remembered that the floor was metal. If the fire had eaten its way up through the floors below, then it was probably coming up through the stairwell, too. He turned around to look and saw Mike next to Donatello, both of them sliding climbing claws onto their hands.

"Oh, tell me you ain't thinking what I think you're thinking," Raph said.

"Can't go down the way we came up," Mike said. "I just looked. No way, man."

"And we can't go up," Donatello said. "We have to hope Shredder made the outer glass thick enough to take our claws. Mike, could you--"

"Way ahead of you," Mike said, heading for the glass windows. He had to slam his nunchucks into a single pane several times before the thick glass cracked and shattered.

Raph tried to convince himself that it might work. If it didn't, they'd have to catch one of the ledges as the tower widened farther down, and try to spring towards another building. Anything but stay in what was about to become a deathtrap. The hardest part would be bringing Leo--

The far wall exploded inward, sending concrete and steel flying through the room while the shockwave shattered the windows and nearly pushed Mike out with them. Only a quick whip of his chucks around a slender steel frame kept him from falling out. Closer to the blast, Raphael fell sideways as flaming bits of debris showered around and on him. Cursing wildly, he shook them off and scrambled to his feet, staring at the flaming wreckage. Whatever the fire had hit, it had taken out a large section of this floor. He could actually see into the floors below, now nearly burned through.

There was no more time. He turned to grab his brother and stopped. Leo was no longer merely collapsed. He seemed to have sunk into himself. At first Raphael didn't know why he'd thought that, but after a second he realized it had nothing to do with Leo's slumped posture and everything to do with his unwillingness to move despite the fire creeping closer. He sat completely still, even though he must have felt the explosion and heard the fire and felt the heat, as if he was waiting for the fire to catch up and devour him.

The thought actually gave Raphael a glimmer of hope. Animals weren't suicidal. If Leo wasn't trying to get out of the tower, he might be back in his right mind again. Or at least somewhat normal, Raph thought. Just in case he had to dodge a surprise attack, he approached him from the side, kneeling next to him when he didn't move.

Leonardo at first did not notice him. All he knew was that his prey...his enemy was dead. His brothers were dead. All the rest was confusion. He remembered Shredder pulling away his mask and blinding him, remembered setting the fire and climbing through darkness. And then he was sitting here on the floor, staring at Saki's heart. The inbetween of that was a blur of red and black, blood and shadows, anger and emptiness.

Someone touched his shoulder and he looked up, but he didn't recognize his brother beyond a vague recollection of familiarity, that this person was important to him somehow. This person was somehow the reason he had needed to kill the man before him, and as much as he wanted to lay still and let the fire swallow his pain, he had to keep this person from the fire.

Raphael said something, but Leonardo didn't understand him. While Raphael tried to talk to him, Leonardo ignored him and looked at the flames surrounding the gaping hole in the floor. The light hurt his eyes but only because of their earlier injuries in the bright hallway. More importantly, he heard the fire and listened to its crackling beneath him, seeing in his mind the patterns and routes it took. He heard it swirling around the floor, enclosing them and chewing through the stairwell. But there was one more route, directly in the center of the inferno.

With that in mind, he seized Raphael's wrist and suddenly came to his feet, running towards the flames. Caught off guard, Raphael stumbled after him, pulled along too fast to get any leverage. He could have easily stopped his brother if he'd had a second's warning, but Leonardo moved without thought. Raph had time to scream before he was forced over the edge of the twisted floor and into the fire below.

At the windows, Mike and Donatello shared a horrified look before running after them, stopping at the edge of the fire and looking down in time to see Raphael fall sideways into the blown out section of the elevator shaft. There was a vague path through the flames to the shaft, but both of them hesitated, forced a step back by the intense heat and their instinctive fear. Mike looked back at the shattered windows and figured that either way was just as dangerous, and this way would give them a better chance of escaping without being seen. Ultimately, though, it came down to his trust in his eldest brother. Despite everything, he still trusted Leo to bring them through any problem, so he jumped down into the only clear section in the room and ran for the dark shaft, knowing that Donatello would follow right behind him.

Not even waiting to see if Raph or Leo were in the way, they jumped into the shaft, escaping the worst of the heat. The metal around them was already turning red so they didn't bother trying to climb down the walls. Mike grabbed the steel cord holding the elevator and slid down. The claws protected his hands from friction burns for the most part, but he knew already that the skin around the length of metal would need bandaging later.

Only a few floors below them, Leonardo had opened the emergency hatch on top of the elevator, understanding it less as a door and more like a weak spot he could pry apart. Once inside, he paused. The fire had consumed most of this floor. Slipping through the gap between the elevator and floor would be quick but would still mean going through flames.

Something flew by his face so fast he didn't have time to be startled. A second later a white explosion filled the area near them, dousing the flames for a few seconds. This time Raphael took his brother's hand and forced him out. The fire extinguisher's explosion would buy them enough time to get through, though he hated the loss of his sai. He heard his brothers land on the elevator and followed after Leonardo to give Mike and Don room to come after him.

He didn't understand how Leo could move through the sheer metal walls, crawling down them like a spider while he had to use his climbing claws. A few stolen seconds let him touch the walls Leo had passed and he found deep dents and even a few punctures. If Leonardo's changes were as drastic as they thought, small wonder that his body was altering itself to match his mind.

Of course now he had the ability to move faster than his brother, sliding down the uninterrupted elevator cable. He'd ask Donatello later why this one had cable underneath as well as above, but for now he accepted it as divine intervention and slid fast enough to burn his hands despite his claws.

Donatello followed only seconds behind him, and Mike followed after just as the fire swept back towards him. He grabbed the cable and slid faster despite the pain. The building shuddered with another explosion. He didn't want to think about how much more time they had. It was like a timed puzzle in one of his video games where he had to leap over a bunch of fences with a giant boulder rolling after him. He hated that puzzle; he had yet to beat it.

Mike could tell when they'd passed into the bloodiest sections of the tower; the copper smell permeated the shaft. He breathed out. They were making good time if they were this far down. Just like the long shaft in the Game, the smell would be strongest where the blood gathered at the bottom.

Only Leonardo knew that the walls were bleeding where the amount he'd shed found its way through vents and gaps in the floors. He struggled to keep his grip on the metal but slipped several times, coming down faster than he should have. Too soon, he lost control and fell, plummeting past the three creatures he was guiding.

Fortunately he only fell a few feet, landing hard on the basement floor. He winced and sat up, holding his battered left arm. It didn't feel broken, but not for his lack of trying. Above him, Raphael slowed and landed softly, warned only by Leonardo's accident and saving himself a broken leg. He immediately searched the wall for the doors and, once found, dug his fingers into the space between them, forcing them open. Donatello and Michelangelo helped as soon as they landed, and soon they had the doors pried far enough for them to slip through. Raph went first, looking for a way out. Donatello's flashlight, the last one they had only because he hadn't dropped his bag, lit up what was now obviously a parking garage. And in the corner they saw the garage door down and the city lights sparkling along the sides. Trusting one of his siblings to bring Leo after them, Raphael crossed the long distance to the door and used his only sai to break the chains holding it shut and destroy the locking mechanism.

While Donatello went after Raphael to help, Mike bent and took Leo's hand, helping him stand. He didn't like the raggedness of his brother's breathing or the cold touch of his skin. It had all the earmarks of a dying animal. There was enough light to see the blood on his brother, but he couldn't tell which was Leo's and which was everyone else's. In any case, Leo followed him easily enough, head down, leaning heavy on his shoulder. Mike put his arm around him when he felt him falter. By the time they reached the open door, Donatello had already cleared the street and Raphael had smashed the nearest streetlights, giving them enough shadows to escape.

Behind them, sirens crowded the streets. Only after putting several streets between them and the tower did they come to rest in an alley to wait for the police and fire engines and ambulances to finish driving by. There were so many news channel vans that none of them wanted to risk stepping out, even to get home that much faster. After a few minutes, when the adrenaline and fear started to wane, they noticed that it was raining ice and slush.

"Great," Raph muttered, huddling closer to the brick wall. "Why does shit like this always happen to us during winter?"

Donatello sidled close to him. "Karma. You must've done something really bad in a past life."

"Me?" Raph asked. "Can't be my karma. Leo's the one who just slaughtered the foot clan."

They looked at Leo and Mike, both standing in the frozen rain. Leo didn't look like he was going to move and Mike was loathe to leave him alone. Bit by bit, the ice rinsed away the blood, revealing the true extent of his injuries. Mike winced when he saw the cuts along his arms and sides, the deep gash through his hand, the giant bruises along his legs. The ice couldn't wash the blood from those wounds, as thick as it had dried, and Mike couldn't help but notice the ice's reflection in Leo's black eyes. He stared into them, wondering how much of his brother remained.

Leo's torn hand came to rest on Mike's shoulder, and Leo tilted his head. The cold and the respite from killing drove back the bloodlust and he looked at the creature he'd guided out of the tower. Long seconds passed before he put the shadow and light together to make a familiar face, and even more time passed before he could put a name, a memory, to the face.

"You're alive," he whispered. "You're alive."

Mike felt like he'd fall in relief. Leo's voice was sickly sharp like a quiet scream, and the tips of his fingers felt too pointed, and it didn't help that pure black eyes were a staple in horror films, but his brother was still in there somewhere. "Yeah," he answered. "I'm right here."

"I heard you die."

"No," Mike shook his head. "That was mushroom smoke, Spanish mushrooms I think."

Raph looked at Don. "Spanish mushrooms?"

Donatello just shook his head. Why did he try to explain anything to them?

The sirens and news vans were slowing down. Raph decided it was time to move, especially now that Leo was at least somewhere between himself and the thing inside him. He flipped open his communicator and dialed his master. Three voices yelled at him before he had a chance to talk.

"Raphael, is that--"

"--you find him--?"

"--out of there--"

"--is Leo still--"

"Hang on!" he snapped. "We got him, we're out, Shredder's dead, the whole clan's dead. Anything else?"

"All of them?" Splinter asked. "How is that possible?"

"Leo--no, it's a long story. I'll explain when we get home," Raph said. "Should only take us a few minutes. Could you crank up the heater? We're gonna be frozen when we get there."

"Sure thing," April said, already heading towards Donatello's lab and the climate controls inside.

"Raphael," Splinter said. "Your brother? Is he still..." He paused as he tried to figure out how to ask the question.

"He's not all here," Raph answered, glancing at his sibling. Without the drive to kill, Leo seemed less like a psychopath and more like a curious animal. He just hoped he wouldn't bite on the way home. "But he's not dangerous right now, and Don says he's got an idea to get him back to normal."

"Very well," Splinter said. "Come home as fast as you can."

"We're on our way." He flipped off the communicator and headed down the alley, but luck was with him. There was a manhole cover only a few feet away. As tired as he was, it took a little time to manage it off and then Mike had to lead their brother in after them, but within a few minutes they were underground and heading home. Above ground, the rain turned to snow and blanketed the manhole in gray slush.

TBC...


	9. 9

****

Part 9

Afraid his big brother might disappear, especially in sewers reminiscent of the Game's dark tunnels, Mike kept a firm grip on Leo's good hand. As they walked further, he realized he didn't have to worry. Leo leaned against him as if he'd fall otherwise and kept his eyes firmly shut, occasionally turning his head from the light that came through the rain gutters. The only problem came when they had to pass through the narrowest passages and walk single file without light, but during those stretches Leonardo would guide Mike through, sometimes tugging him away from the debris and rusted pipes that Mike couldn't see.

A few minutes before they arrived at the lair, Raphael called ahead and warned Splinter to take April and Casey to his room and stay out of sight. As docile as his brother seemed now, he didn't want to risk an attack on people that Leo might not recognize. He flipped off the communicator and looked at his brother. Maybe docile was the wrong word. Helpless, maybe, although he couldn't believe that, not after the race down the tower. Still, Mike seemed to be all that was holding Leo up.

The lair was silent. Eyes shut against the light, Leo trusted Mike to guide him through to the sick room and then to one of the beds. Behind them, Donatello moved to dim the lights but Raphael grabbed his wrist, stopping him. He shook his head and mouthed the word "no." Don frowned but didn't argue. He had plenty of bandages left over from his raid on Stockman's lab that he could use, winding them gently over Leo's eyes to protect them.

"I'm gonna go talk with Splinter," Raph said. When none of them answered, he sighed and walked out. He didn't look forward to the mass of questions he'd have to answer, and the burns on his hands throbbed painfully, but from the looks of things, Don and Mike would be busy with Leo for awhile. It was to be expected. After all, whenever Leo was injured, he always made sure that everyone else was treated first, no matter how serious or painful his own wounds were. Now it was Raph's turn to shoulder that, even if he didn't want to.

Mike glanced at Raphael as he left, then turned his attention back to big brother, watching Donatello pull out the items they'd need. "Anything I can do?" he asked.

"Sure," Don said, "get me some hot water. We need to clean out those cuts before anything else. I'll start him on an IV afterward."

"IV?" Mike asked as he took a few steps to the back of the room where Donatello had set up a small kitchenette, including a refrigerator and sink. He'd always wondered why Donatello would put a refrigerator in a sick room, but he'd soon learned that it kept several things inside that might have perished otherwise. It also meant he wouldn't have to leave Leo alone for more than a few seconds. Blind, tired, and hurt, he didn't think it would take much to make his brother panic, especially not after he'd thought they were dead.

He got a bowlful of hot water and set to work cleaning away the blood, human and mutant, taking the time to calm down. So much had happened and he only now had time to process it all. Shredder was dead and probably nothing but ashes, the foot clan was decimated, if there were even any survivors, and his brother...barely his brother now.

Once Donatello joined him, they sat on either side of Leo's bed and carefully patched him back together, in the case of his hand, literally. Packed gauze in the middle of the stab would keep it from bleeding or healing superficially, and enough bandage went around to both hold it secure and force Leo to keep his hand open. Mike just hoped that Leo wouldn't pull it all off later.

"Do you think he'll get full use of it back?" he asked.

"I dunno," Don said, stitching the gash on Leo's side. "I'm an engineer, not a doctor. If it was just a matter of rewiring and soldering new circuits, I could do it in a couple hours, but..." He finished the stitches and looked up at the long slice down his brother's arm and shoulder. "The only reason I've learned even this much is because I had Splinter to explain all of Stockman's supplies to me."

"Should we get Splinter here to do this instead?" Mike asked.

"I don't think Raph wants to risk Leo attacking Master Splinter," Don said. "He barely remembers us. Who knows what he'd do around anyone else? And besides, we're not doing such a bad job."

"I guess." Mike looked back at his brother and gasped. Leo hadn't made a noise through their conversation, but his face was drawn tight and his breathing came too fast. "Oh geez, I didn't even think--Donny, do we have any painkillers?"

"Huh?" Donatello looked up blankly at him, then paled. "Oh shit." He got up and rifled through the storage bins holding everything he'd plucked from Stockman's lab, considering which medicine to use, discarding one as too powerful, the next as too weak.

Since his right arm was mostly uninjured, Leo leaned against Mike and put his head on his brother's shoulder. Mike instinctively held him, careful not to brush the bandaged hand. "You're exhausted," Mike whispered, then half-smiled. "Of course you're exhausted. You even collapsed back there, I just didn't really notice."

"...I'm sorry."

The faint whisper still sounded a quiet scream, but at least it was coherent. Mike looked at him, but Leo had his head down, refusing to look up. "Sorry about what? None of this is your fault."

"...too weak. I couldn't stop."

Mike tried to bite back a laugh, but he couldn't help a soft snicker. "Weak...? Leo, you killed Shredder, destroyed the Foot, kept us safe...and made the country safe for democracy," he added, hoping for a laugh and happy even with the small one Leo gave. He put his arm around his sibling and sighed. "I hope someday I'm as weak as you."

Leo didn't answer except to press a little closer. When Donatello came back with a hypodermic needle in hand, he found Leo fast asleep on his brother's shoulder. He still gave him an injection, if only to keep the pain from waking him up later, but whatever Mike had said to him probably did more to ease Leo's suffering than the shot would.

Inside Splinter's room, Raphael closed his eyes and turned his head a little, flinching from the questions thrown his way as if they were as hot as the fire he'd just escaped. Splinter had started asking but then April and Casey had joined in, and now they were getting indignant because he wasn't answering. He held up one hand, accidentally showing off the friction burns on his palms, but it had the effect he wanted. They all shut up. He took a deep breath and coughed a few times, waving them down when they tried to start interrogating him again.

"I told you on the cell," he began, "Shredder's dead. Leo killed him and probably most of the foot clan."

"Probably?" Casey asked.

"The bodies weren't in no condition to be counted," Raph said, and they didn't ask again. "We followed him inside the tower and up the main staircase for awhile. I never realized how many floors all these skyscrapers have. Leo met Shredder somewhere above us, and they started fighting, and then we caught up and I helped double-team Saki. Leo killed him, he found us a way down through the fire, and we got out through the basement parking lot before the news vans showed up."

"Not just a fire," Splinter said. "Before we retreated here, we saw the news covering the explosion of the tower. They doubt it will collapse, but several floors have already been destroyed."

Raphael wanted to say of course he knew about that, they'd seen the damage as it exploded around them, but he figured that would just earn him more questions. Besides, Splinter had made that sound like an accusation. Great, Raph, glad your brothers are fine but couldn't you have avoided all the property damage? In fact, why did Leo get so far ahead of you that you lost control? He was confused and unstable and you're the one supposed to take care of him and Mike and Don and yourself if you can spare the time--

"No wonder he ran away," he said softly to himself. No doubt Leonardo had endured several similar interrogations. Raphael could understand how his brother had collapsed under their weight.

But he wasn't his brother.

Raphael shook his head. No, this was going to stop right now. "April, Case', could you wait outside? Leo's in the other room, so he won't see ya, an' I need to talk to Master Splinter alone."

Both of them hesitated, then nodded and left, quietly closing the door behind themselves. Raphael and Splinter stared at each other for several seconds over the candle flames, and then Splinter picked up one of his long matches and lit it, preparing to light the candles between himself and his son. As his hand neared the first wick, however, Raphael pressed two fingers to the flame, putting it out. The heat singed his skin but nowhere near as much as sliding down the elevator cable had.

"Raphael?"

"I'm not as strong my brother," Raph said softly, as if speaking to himself. "I've only been doing this for half a year and already it's getting to be too much. How he put up with you for sixteen years is beyond me. I swear to God, if this keeps up, I'm gonna run away too, and I'll take him with me."

He looked up at his father, who sat in disbelief. "What am I supposed to say? Sorry we blew up Saki's headquarters? Yeah, we got out in one piece, got Leo back and never got seen, but we didn't do it perfectly so we fail the test?"

"I am indeed relieved that you are all well," Splinter said, "but it never should have gotten so far out of hand. After the initial fight--"

"Leo was going nuts and we were facing twenty elites. Of course the foot clan caused us problems. That's why they're called the enemy!"

"Raphael, if this has become overwhelming for you--"

"What? You'll give it to Donatello? Or do you honestly think Mike can handle being responsible for everyone?" Raph leaned forward as if he could simply will the understanding into his father. "Master, I know you only mean the best for us, but this assignment is killing me. And it's killing Leo."

"But the burden of responsibility is no longer his," Splinter said. "Does he still try to carry it?"

"Of course," Raph said. "I'm supposed to be in charge, but he worries about us like nothing's changed. When he went into the tower, he told me he was taking it back just for tonight. And he still thinks he's a failure."

"What do you mean?"

"He said he ran from responsibility. Not that it was too much, just that he ran." Raph popped a joint in his neck and tried not to flex his hands. The burns were starting to sting. "I've been thinking about what he said before, back when we got him out of the game. About him not being able to cut."

"He began to see himself as a living weapon," Splinter said. "As if protecting you was his only reason for living."

"Yeah, and that's a bad thing, I'm not arguing that." Raph took a deep breath and coughed again. It would be awhile before he got rid of all the smoke in his lungs. "But it was something else he said. He thought for sure that we'd hate him, that he'd failed us. I never really understood why he thought that until I took responsibility for them."

Splinter held silent a moment. "Something I have done has caused this?"

"Not just you. It's not just the pressure of taking care of everyone, it's having to do it perfectly to please you." Raph laughed bitterly. "No wonder he hated me. I must've been a constant thorn in his side."

He shook his head. He could make amends later. "Look...Leo's never gonna give it up. He's grown up bossing us around, and that won't ever change. It might even be a good thing. That's...his place in the family and it hurts him not doing it, you can see it every day."

"True," Splinter nodded. "His look follows you every time you enter my room."

"He wants it back," Raph said. "When he lost control tonight, he even slipped back into that roll, even if he was a little 'off.' He protected us to the end." When he wasn't completely insane, he thought, but he didn't say it. "But you have to make it easier on him. He can't be perfect, and expecting perfection from him will just make him run away again."

"But a mistake could cost your lives," Splinter said.

"An' we know that," Raph said. "He practices even harder than you expect him to because he's got that weight on him. I'm just sayin' don't add any more pressure onto him. He puts enough on himself as it is."

Splinter sighed and looked askance. "To think that my love for you is what turned into the greatest burden...we must do this carefully, slowly ease my demands on him."

"Slowly--?"

"Yes, or else he will think it is pity on our part. Would that do any good?"

Raph shook his head. "No. No, he'd just take it as another failure. Slowly how?"

"Mainly in my tone and attitude," Splinter said, "though I wonder how I will be able to change the attitudes of an old rat."

"You ain't that old," Raph said.

Splinter raised an eyebrow but didn't respond. Kids. "And we will begin now. I think a vacation might in order for you four, and I know Leonardo must recuperate after his injuries, as must you."

"These?" Raph said, looking at his hands. "Don't hurt much. They're not nearly as bad as Leo got."

"...I think this might be the best example you've given me," Splinter said quietly. "Leonardo had a habit of putting off treatment until he had spoken to me. It cannot be coincidence that you do the same." Raphael opened his mouth to speak, but Splinter waved him down. "No, go take care of yourself. One conversation alone will not alter much, and you must tend to your injuries. We can speak later."

Dismissed, Raphael bowed once and stood, heading through the lair back to the sick room. He found Mike rummaging through the storage containers in the back and Leonardo sitting up in bed, curled in the corner against the wall and the cabinet behind his bed, a blanket over his lower body while Donatello hung an IV bag from the cabinet behind him. Raphael followed the tube from the bag down to the back of Leo's hand. "What is it?" he asked.

"Shh," Don whispered. "He's asleep." He adjusted the IV once more to make sure it wouldn't slip free, then looked at his brother. "Blood. Your blood, actually. It's the best way I could think of to reintroduce our genetics to him. I've got some from all of us, so we should be able to stagger when I get more from each of us. Now aren't you glad I keep plenty on hand?"

"You're just a needle-happy, overgrown leech," Raph grumbled at his brother. He sat down on the bed nearest the door and held his hands up. "If you're done with him, mind taking care of these?"

"Once Mike finds the rest of the bandages," Don said. "I think I lost a whole box back there."

"Just as cluttered as your lab, big surprise," Raph said. He motioned towards their brother. "You sure that's gonna do any good?"

"He needs it anyway," Don said. "Shredder died, but he still got a good number of hits in. His arm, his side, his hand..."

"His eyes."

Donatello nodded. "It's probably best if we keep him blind for awhile. It'll let them heal, and besides, he doesn't need his eyes right now."

That wasn't the reason Raphael had wanted him blind, but he didn't say so. Even if Leonardo didn't use his eyes except in darkness, bright light was enough to cripple him in a fight. Raph would rather keep him at a disadvantage until he was sure Leo was back to normal.

"Found 'em!" Mike whispered loudly as he stood up, coming over with a handful of rolls of gauze. He sat down next to Raphael and dumped the bandages on the bed, unwrapping one package and starting on his own hands. "What'd Splinter say?"

"We...talked. We're gonna get something like a vacation for awhile. All of us could use a break, I guess." He breathed out and started coughing again. When his breathing came back under control, he closed his eyes for a moment and held still. A few seconds later he noticed his two younger brothers staring at him. "What?"

"You're hurt," Don said. "And tired. Why didn't you say anything?"

From his tone, it was obvious he meant more than just the fight. For a moment he wanted to argue, but then Raphael just sighed and shook his head. "Some leader I turned out to be. I take over for six months and already I'm worn down."

"It's been a rough six months," Mike said. He finished bandaging his hands and turned slightly, grabbing Raphael's wrist and starting on his right hand. "C'mon, it was never this bad before. You just came in at a rough time."

"Right...I think I'll be happy if I can get him to take back his job, though."

Donatello grinned. "If that happens, does that mean you'll stop picking fights with him?"

Raphael glanced at Leonardo. His elder brother looked smaller than usual, curled up as he was, and intensely vulnerable, not only because he was blind and wounded. Normally his brother had a guarded expression, even in sleep, but now he looked even younger than Mike. Either Leo was deep inside his animalistic mind or he trusted them completely. Probably both. Raph grinned.

"Nah. Someone's gotta keep him from getting too stuck-up."

TBC...


	10. 10

****

Part 10

Everyone was dead, Shredder, the Foot Clan, his brothers, Splinter, April, Casey, everyone except him. He knelt on the hot metal floor and watched the fire explode from below. No sound. Debris landed silently around him while the fire spread and a constant static drone hissed in his ears. He watched the fire creep over his brothers, their bodies stacked in a half-eaten pile, burning them beyond recognition and leaving them black and charred as it swept towards him. The flames touched him but he didn't move, sitting still as it burned the blood off of him. It devoured him and moved past, leaving him in total darkness. He raised his hand, black and twisted, wondering why he was still alive. The white noise grew louder until he recognized it as his own mindless, hungry shriek.

Leo woke up, heart pounding, breathing too fast. The dream instantly vanished from his memory but he remembered the feelings, crushing despair and fear, the overwhelming sense of no escape. He shifted and the blissful painlessness evaporated, leaving him too sore and tired to move. As he breathed in, he found could only breath half as much as he should. For a moment he started to panic, trying to breathe deep. It was no use. He could only breathe in small amounts. When he didn't feel himself becoming lightheaded, he calmed down and lay still.

His entire body felt twisted. Moving his good hand felt like breaking bones. Turning his head made him feel like he was falling and he grabbed the side of the bed despite the pain. Ridiculous, he thought. Yesterday he was hacking through the entire foot clan, but now he couldn't move without pain. And yesterday he'd fought in the dark, the ninjas mere red silhouettes against the shadows, but now he was totally blind, without even hints of shapes. He hesitated. No, something was covering his eyes. He thought about taking it off, but he was too tired to seriously consider it and his eyes would probably hurt if he did anyway.

A cold hand touched his shoulder and he tensed. He hadn't sensed anyone nearby. God, he couldn't even move. Had he made it home last night?

"Relax, it's all right." Keeping his voice low, Raphael lightly touched his sibling's head. "Finally. Thought it'd never break."

"What?" Leo whispered almost too softly for his brother to hear.

"Fever," Raph said. "It was pretty damn high for awhile, and you coughing up blood didn't help. Don't scare us like that ever again, man. Bad enough we had to fetch you back home, but you nearly made all that for nothing." Leonardo's silence didn't put him off from talking. Raphael kept speaking in low tones, but Leo didn't think he was trying to comfort him. Raph sounded like he was comforting himself.

"You probably noticed you can't breathe in that much. That's Don's fault. He says he gave you too much of our blood at first. It was like speeding down the highway and hitting a wall without breaking. Your body was adapting too fast in both directions, nearly tore you apart, so instead of pints, he's gonna do it with small vials of blood. I'm kinda glad you slept through it but at least the worst is over." He lightly touched Leo's torn hand. "See, the claws you were gettin' are gone. Last to come, first to go. And you should be able to breathe better in a couple days, we hope."

"How long?" Leo asked.

"Pro'lly another couple of months before -- oh," Raph nodded once as he understood. "Two days. Don used a sedative to keep you under. We...we nearly lost you. Your cuts were infected. Guess the tower wasn't so clean, huh? And it took awhile to stop the bleeding. I guess that the fee...um, that other part of your DNA wasn't built to heal. The fever was the worst, though. We've been working in shifts keeping an eye on you. I guess maybe we can relax now."

"Every..." Leo paused. Speaking was hard with only a mouthful of air. "Everyone else?"

"Better'n you. A little scorched around the edges, and we won't be holding onto our weapons anytime soon, but nothing bad." Raph hesitated. "Leo...I know you probably ain't feeling all that hungry right now, but you need to eat something. Your body's gonna start feeding on itself and you can't afford that right now."

Leo winced and turned away from his brother, tightening his grip on the bed as the world spun around again, but his brother wouldn't let him dodge the question.

"I can't let this slide," Raph said. "Either you eat or...well, you don't wanna know about the other option Don's been itching to try out. Look, I promise nothing complicated, okay? But you have to eat. Do you think you can?"

I think I liked giving orders better than taking them, Leo thought. "Now?"

Raph smiled at the tone. His big brother sounded just like Mike when he didn't wanna do something. "Nah. I'll give ya a couple of hours of rest first, okay?"

Leo nodded once, squeezing his eyes even tighter. The vertigo simply wouldn't go away. He expected to hear his brother leave and let everyone know he was awake, but instead he heard Raphael sit down beside him again. Pages rustled near his bed and he figured that his brother was reading. Now there was something he wished he could see. He had no clue as to his brother's tastes in books.

Blind and forced to lie still, he listened as the room expanded from his bed to his brother to the walls around them, and indistinct voices leaked through the water in the pipes buried in the wall. After a few minutes he heard Raphael's voice, less than a whisper, as he read.

"On difficult ground, keep moving. On enclosed ground, devise stratagems. On death ground, fight."

Should have known. He settled his head on the pillow and breathed a small sigh of relief when the vertigo lessened somewhat. "Raph...?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you...read out loud?" Even though he could probably quote it to him verbatim.

"No prob." Leo would've sworn he even heard his brother smile as he flipped the pages a few times. "Terrain, twenty-three. If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory then you must not fight, even at the ruler's bidding."

"You picked that out," Leo said, trying not to laugh. It made the gash in his side ache.

"Yup. I found this one, too. 'The consummate leader cultivates the moral law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is in his power to control success'. Y'know, if you'd just handed this book to me awhile ago, we coulda saved ourselves some arguing. This really explains why you do all those things that drive me crazy."

"Would you have read it?"

Raph paused. "Nah, probably not. Maybe some of it. I only started reading it 'cause it was here when we got you home and I got bored watching ya, but I can really see where you get some of your strategy from now. But I still think you're too patient."

"Even after last night?"

Raphael laughed but he didn't answer, quietly reading another section. "The onrush of a conquering force is like the bursting of pent-up waters into a chasm a thousand fathoms deep." No wonder their enemies had lost. They'd simply chosen the wrong night to attack their family. With a sigh he slowly shed the weight from his shoulders. His brother was back. He didn't have to worry about fighting or killing for now. He flipped to the start of a new chapter and began to read.

Two hours later, Raphael set his book down. He'd read through the 36 Stratagems and started into the generals' commentaries, and his brother was starting to look more in control of himself. "You ready?"

A short sigh, which meant that Leo had hoped he'd forget. "Yeah."

Raphael gently slid his hands under his brother and helped him sit up. It didn't take much work, his brother was only tired, but he needed leverage since he couldn't put much weight on his arms. After a little maneuvering and with the pillows from the rest of the beds, Leo was mostly upright. It took awhile longer for him to settle the spinning in his head.

"I'll be right back," Raph said. "Just try to relax."

Easy to say when he wasn't the one about to fall. Leo just nodded once and focused on the pillows behind himself. They weren't moving and he had to convince himself that he wasn't moving either. He turned slightly to his right, pressing his face into a pillow, and tried reciting stratagems to himself. It helped a little, but Raphael's hand on his shoulder helped more. He couldn't see what Raph was holding, but he felt the heat radiating from it.

He couldn't move his left arm and could only bring his right hand up to the bowl Raphael held, depending solely on his brother to feed him, and he drank in small sips. Only because he'd once done the same for Raphael long ago when they were small during a bout of pneumonia did he manage to keep his sense of pride. That, and the horrible taste distracted him. Whatever Michelangelo had cooked up and decided to call chicken soup probably involved parts of the bird not normally used. When what little he'd been brought was done, he paused to take several breaths, happy when he could draw in a bit more than before.

"You can't tell me anyone else is eating that," he whispered.

"Nope," Raph said with a smile. "No one else'll touch it and you don't have a choice."

"Just wait, I'll get all of you back for that." Leo paused to take several breaths. "Any idea when I'll be back to normal?"

Raphael hesitated, setting the bowl aside and leaning back in his chair. "A couple months before you're up and practicing again, though you'll probably be out of bed in a week or two."

"And...?" Leo pressed, though he couldn't bring himself to say it.

"Don ain't sure. You were changing over half a year, so maybe six months. He said it could end up a number of ways, like you completely going back to normal, or you might need a weekly or monthly dose of our blood, or you might stop somewhere in the middle. He's, uh...he's not too confident about your eyes."

The way they were feeling inside his mask, hot and scratchy, he didn't feel confident either. But he was exhausted already, and decided to worry about it later when he might be able to do more about it. Since he was more comfortable sitting up, he simply drowsed where he was, barely noticing his sibling changing the bandages on his hand as he fell asleep.

A few hours later Raphael stood in Leonardo's room. It felt wrong to be inside alone and he couldn't help looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. He knew they weren't. April and Casey were out of the lair now that it was safe, Donatello was in front of the televisions, Mike was watching their brother, and Splinter was in his room meditating on the cosmos. Well, maybe not the cosmos, Raph thought, but that was the running joke between his siblings and it probably wasn't too far off anyway.

He looked around his elder brother's room. Leonardo had painted his own cosmos on the ceiling in the form of Van Gogh's Starry Night and cleared the far wall in anticipation of a new mural. Judging from the art books left wide open on the floor, he was studying various depictions of the Virgin Mary standing with golden light silhouetting her. But then a bunch of a postcards and photos of the Manhattan skyline also dotted the floor. If Raphael squinted, he could make out the sketched pencil lines of buildings on the wall, so his brother was planning on the skyline, but a large blank spot stood out to one side, waiting to be filled.

Raphael shook his head. He'd ask Leo later. For now he wandered through the room, picking his way over the books and photos, and stopped at the bookshelves.

Row after row, nothing but books on tactics and strategy. Even the few that weren't purely military manuals were historical accounts of war. World War II seemed to be Leonardo's favorite, or maybe that was just the one he found the most material on. There was a book on something called the Great War and a huge volume on the Warring States Era, but he didn't recognize anything else.

He stood up and turned. Even if the wall hadn't been cleared, the room would seem obscenely empty, like his brother had no life beyond studying warfare. The scattered art references on the floor didn't help. They just made the room seem emptier. It was nothing like his own room, full of training gear, his free weights, the huge hammock he'd slung near the ceiling. His own room looked lived in. Leo's...Raph shook his head. He hadn't noticed before because he only came in when it was dark, but his brother had even taken down the few display weapons from the walls. He didn't know if that was good or not.

With a heavy sigh, he flopped down on Leonardo's bed and stared at the ceiling. The yellow swirling stars were relaxing, and from this angle he saw that Van Gogh's building in the background had only been suggested with faint lines, not entirely drawn. He guessed that his brother had decided to leave it out halfway through and just went with the stars.

Water rushed through pipes hidden somewhere behind the walls. Muffled through the bricks, it sounded like whispers and low voices. Raphael shivered. No wonder Leo was a little weird in the head if he listened to that all night. Heck, how did he avoid having to go to the bathroom all the time? Raph glanced at the door and the large pipes running along the ceiling of the lair directly across. He paused and peered at them.

On the largest, a wide patch had been polished to a mirror sheen directly in his line of sight. From it, he could see the entire lair, from the front door to the kitchen and stream to Splinter's room, without even turning his head. The view was warped like staring into a Christmas ornament but everything was clear. He could even watch Donatello flip channels, although the screens were too small to see.

"You sneaky son of a bitch," Raph said softly. He sat up and immediately the mirrored patch disappeared from view. He experimented through the whole room and even from the other doorways on the second floor, but it was only visible from Leonardo's bed. No wonder they'd never noticed. "You never stopped watching, did you?"

Inside the sick room, Mike sat at his brother's side bringing him up to speed on the news, at least as far as the tower was concerned. Leonardo, for his part, sat quietly and listened as his brother described all the news channels speculating wildly about terrorists until the newest rumors involved arson and gang warfare.

"The cops even mentioned that all the bodies were dressed as ninjas, but then the Japanese embassy got all upset about racial stereotypes and they're threatening a lawsuit now." Mike grinned and leaned back in his chair, tipping it backwards slightly. "Now they're wondering what to do with the building. It's really gutted, but there's enough left that they might try to fix it."

"Figures," Leo said. "I go to all the trouble of blowing it up..."

"The snow's what did it," Mike said. "It helped the fire fighters a lot. Well, that and the upper floors were totally empty. There wasn't much to burn."

"Mm."

Mike glanced at his sibling. "Dude, you okay? I mean mentally, 'cause I know physically you're kinda screwed up but Raph says you're screwed up in the head too sometimes. I mean he says it all the time, that you're screwed up sometimes. Geez, I'm not helping, am I?"

"It's okay," Leo said. "He's right, a little. I haven't felt this tired since...ever. It's nice to just sleep for awhile, that's all." Heck, it was nice just to breathe easier. Sitting up helped, he thought. "Don't tell Raph I said that, though."

"No prob," Mike laughed. "Besides, you'll have plenty of time to sleep once you're fit to travel."

"Travel?" Leo asked, sitting straighter. "What do you mean?"

"You don't know?" Mike asked, worry creeping into his voice. "He didn't...oh man, he's gonna be ticked I told. I thought you knew."

"Knew what?" Leo fidgeted and tried not to. "Mike, is this bad?"

"No! No, it's good, really. Splinter just said it'd be a good idea to get you out of the lair for awhile, kinda like a vacation. You gotta admit, you could do with some quiet time just to heal, and Casey's farm place is real nice right now."

"I...guess..." Leo wondered why Raphael hadn't said anything before. "How long would I have to stay?"

"Just 'till you're better, maybe a month or so."

A month of doing nothing, he thought, but the forest might be a welcome refuge once he was able to run through it as before.

Mike frowned. His brother was acting strange and he didn't know why. "Just think," he said, forcing a cheerful voice, "it'll be just us four for once. We haven't done that in, like, ages."

Leo looked up, or at least seemed to. "You'll all be with me?"

"Of course." Mike's jaw dropped as he figured it out. "Oh, you didn't think we'd...Leo, we wouldn't just drop you off and leave you all alone! How can you even think that? Okay, granted, even halfway through we'll probably wanna hit each other and we'll probably go off on our own once in awhile, y'know, for 'me' time. But only for a few hours, I swear. You sure you didn't hit your head when you fell in the elevator shaft? 'Cause, dude, thinking we'd leave you all by yourself--I mean, especially when you're acting weird and you need regular shots--that's just...man, Raph was right, you are screwed in the head..."

As Mike went on, alternating between reassuring him and snapping at him, Leo smiled and listened. Part of him loved hearing his brother prattling like he had before his eyes turned black, and part of him took in every word of comfort Mike offered. And part of him just liked the steady drone of his brother's voice drowning out the whispers and low voices in the water pipes behind the walls. Without his eyes to show him where he was, his brothers' voices were all he had to remind him he was safe.

Well, as safe as they could be with Raphael watching over them.

TBC...

Author's Note: Raphael was Leonardo's copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War, probably dog-eared and well-worn.


	11. 11

****

Part 11

When Raphael came back to the sick room to take his next shift, he stopped halfway through the door in surprise. Curled up against Leonardo, Mike drowsed on his elder brother's good shoulder while holding his uninjured hand. Both of them lay nestled together up against the pillows, though the blankets were pulled up over Leo while Mike lay on top of them.

Quietly Raph closed the door and walked over, placing his hand on Mike's shoulder. His brother blinked a few times and looked up, then looked back at Leo to make sure he was still asleep. With a deep breath, Mike stretched and sat up. "Sorry, didn't think I'd fall asleep," he whispered.

"You okay?" Raph asked, careful to keep his voice low.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I just..." Mike shrugged and nodded once at Leo. "He was having nightmares. Bad ones, y'know? I was gonna try and wake him up, but the moment I touched him, he settled back down again. So I just kinda sat holding his hand, but after awhile I got sore of leaning over and sat down next to him. Guess I dozed off. What time is it?"

"Seven. Time for me to take over. Go get some sleep," Raph said, then added "real sleep, not your usual napping in front of the tv."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Mike stood up slowly, trying not to wake his brother, and slipped by Raphael. He paused at the door. "Hey, um, Raph? I kinda accidentally let him know about the farm. I swear, I thought you told him-"

"It's all right," Raph said, waving him down. "I was gonna tell him anyway. How'd he take it?"

"Good, once he realized we were all going and that we weren't gonna just drop him off."

"Geez..." Raphael sighed. "He doesn't think very highly of us, does he?"

Mike hesitated, stifling a yawn. "Or himself."

"Mm." Raph nodded once. More likely that. "I'll talk to him. Go on, you're dead on yer feet."

Once Mike left and the room was quiet again, Raphael sat down on the bed facing his sibling. After a few seconds, Leonardo noticed the change and woke up, sitting straight and pushing the blankets down a few inches. "Mike?"

"Just me," Raph said. "He fell asleep, so I sent him to bed."

"Oh." Leo lay back against the pillows and didn't move. Raph would've thought he'd gone back to sleep, but Leo's breathing didn't change. Raph waited for him to drift off, but as the minutes went by and Leo merely sat still, he figured his brother wasn't going back to sleep.

"What were you dreaming about?"

Probably the wrong thing to ask, judging from the way his brother subtly drew back into himself, lowering his head and pulling the blanket a little closer. He wondered if Leo knew he was watching him, or if he didn't even think about it. With such a rare look on his face, troubled instead of confident, Raphael could only guess what his brother was thinking. "Was it the game?"

"No," Leo said softly. He didn't elaborate.

Hoping he didn't set off Leo's temper, Raph pushed. "Something in the tower?"

"Kind of."

This is gonna be like pulling teeth, Raph thought. There was no way Leo felt guilt for killing all the foot, so it had to be something closer to home. "It's what you hallucinated, ain't it?"

"Raph...I don't...I don't want to talk about it."

"The last time you bottled everything up, you broke down and ran away from home. You tried to commit suicide-"

"That's not fair," Leo whispered, curling up. "I did say something. No one listened."

Raph kicked himself. Even when he tried to go easy on his older brother, he said the wrong thing. He touched Leo's hand like Mike had done before. "I'm listening now."

For a few moments he thought that Leo wouldn't say anything, but slowly he started, gripping Raph's hand as he spoke.

"It was..." His voice died, but he steeled himself and tried again. "In the tower, there was a moment when I gave myself over to the thing inside me. I thought you were dead. I thought I heard you die, and I couldn't..." He paused, catching his breath and holding Raph's hand a little tighter. "I attacked Saki like an animal. And for awhile I drove him back but...he managed to tear my mask off. The light blinded me and the pain brought me back, but I couldn't fight. I was so overwhelmed by how I'd failed you."

He stopped there. After a few seconds Raphael realized that was the nightmare, the sense of failure. He held silent. His understanding of Leonardo's burdened sense of responsibility had deepened enough so that he didn't question his brother's feeling, only how he might have handled it himself. He didn't like the answer he came up with.

"You didn't fail us," Raph whispered. "Not at all."

"It felt so real..." Leo said. "I heard you screaming and I couldn't get to you. All of you died and I couldn't get to you."

"No, we didn't," Raph said, leaning closer. "We're alive. It's all okay now."

"Is it?" Leo asked. His voice sounded ragged, as if he'd been running for along time. "I keep thinking what if this is just me going insane, and I'm still inside the tower, dying. Or..."

Raph waited, but Leo didn't continue. He felt mean for forcing him to go on. "Or...?"

"Sometimes I wonder if I'm still in the game," Leo said softly. "If I missed Mike's hand and fell back in the well, and that I'm just dreaming this."

"Leo..." Raph bit down on his frustration so it wouldn't show, but how was he supposed to know his brother was hurting like this if he kept hiding it? Maybe he'd been too easy on him, letting him retreat into his room when he seemed to need quiet time when really he was falling further in psychosis and fear. He should've dragged him out, made him train, kept him company at least, even if he didn't want it.

Wow. No wonder Leo had been something of a mother hen before.

"Leo, it's not a dream. You're really here." When he didn't get a response, he sighed and looked down. "How long have you thinking this?"

"...since you brought me back."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"...what if I said it, and saying it made me wake up?"

There was nothing he could say to answer that, so Raphael just sat down against his brother's side like Michelangelo had done, holding him against the nightmares and resolving that they would leave for the farm the next day.

When Raphael finally snuck out, leaving his sibling in a dreamless sleep, he spotted his family in front of the television and decided to try the decisive leader approach. He simply told his brothers that they were going to the farm tomorrow, be packed and ready and hey, Master Splinter, we'll be back within a month hopefully.

"Are you insane?" Don asked in a harsh whisper, the television forgotten. "It hasn't even been a week. He's in no condition to move-"

"Even light activity could tear his stitches," Splinter said. "The exertion could further weaken his system-"

"And it's biting cold," Don said, "worse than before. If we take him out now he could get pneumonia. Heck, we all could! You know we can't handle cold weather as well as humans-"

"Keep your voice down," Splinter reminded him, and Raphael used that to slip into the conversation.

"I know all'a that, okay?" he glanced over his shoulder as if Leo might peek out from behind the door. "Look, I'd like to keep him here for awhile longer, too, but we have to get him out of the lair."

"Raph-"

"We have to. He's going crazy here. Okay, slowly, but still."

"Crazy?" Don's eyes widened as he realized Raph was serious. "But why? He's home."

"Yeah, home." And while he didn't want to reveal his brother's thoughts, he could still explain a little of his reasoning. "Look, be quiet for a second and just listen."

Don and Splinter shared a look but fell silent. Expecting Raphael to launch into a Leo-esque lecture about how he was right and they were wrong, they looked at each other in confusion when he didn't say anything. The awkward silence stretched out and when Donatello opened his mouth, Raph raised one hand to shush him. At first the lair seemed quiet, but gradually they became aware of the small stream flowing by, heard the drip of the kitchen sink and couple of leaks overhead, and the water rushing through the pipes in the walls. Now that they were forced to listen, the noise became distracting.

"Hear that?" Raph whispered. "We're so used to it we tune it out, but imagine what it's like for him. His hearing's like ten times better'n ours. He can't sleep right, he can't even think straight. After everything he's been through, he's turning into a basket case and it's only gonna get worse here." He stared at them for a few seconds, assuring himself that he'd won. "We're leaving tomorrow afternoon. We'll drive through the night and get there well before sunrise. Pack light."

Splinter was silent, but Donatello glared at him. "I still think it's a bad idea."

"Duly noted," Raph said dryly. Who cared what they thought? They were going. He turned towards the practice room but froze halfway there.

Did he really not mind that Donatello was upset as long as what needed to get done happened? And now he was thinking about running few a through katas to settle his thoughts. He groaned and walked inside anyway.

"Leo's got to take this job back," he muttered to himself. "Or else I'm gonna turn into him."

Dreamless sleep left Leonardo disoriented every time he woke up, but someone poking at his injured hand made the disorientation even worse. He flinched and shied away before he was completely awake.

"Sorry," Don said, though he didn't sound sorry. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"S'all right." He pushed himself up a few more inches so that he was sitting properly and took a wonderfully deep breath. Sitting up while sleeping definitely helped. "Just go easy, will ya? It still hurts."

"Do you need any more pain killers?" Don interrupted him before he could answer. "Dumb question. Of course you do, you just never bother to ask."

Leo listened to his brother move around the room, riffling through boxes and containers and grumbling too low to make out the words. This had to be the worst part of being sick, putting demands on his siblings who were already tired and worn out from his previous failures.

"...stupid Raphael..."

Wait. Leo tilted his head. Stupid Raphael? Not stupid Leonardo? "Don, are you all right?"

"Yeah, fine." Don plopped back in the chair beside the bed and filled a hypodermic needle. "Here, gimme your hand."

An upset Donatello with a needle scared him more than the game. Leo winced. "Why?"

"'Cause your pain meds come in the form of injections, duh," Don said irritably. "Now c'mon."

"No, I meant..." As fast as he could, Leo grabbed the edge of his blanket and held it a little higher like a shield. He didn't want to yell for help, but it didn't seem like he'd have much choice. "Don, could we wait until you're not in such a bad mood?"

"You took like three stab wounds and didn't whine," Don said. "It's just a needle."

"It still hurts. A knife doesn't inject anything."

"Leo-"

"I'm sorry," he suddenly said, unable to stop himself. "I didn't mean to 'cause all this trouble, and you know I'm grateful for everything you've done, but I don't know what I did this time and I'm sorry Don, but I really hate shots and it's always worse when you're in a bad mood."

Donatello froze, startled by his brother's outburst. Half of what Leonardo said he didn't understand since he said it too fast, but Donatello understood the gist of it. He glanced at the needle in his hand and sighed. Everyone complained about getting shots, but Leo's heightened senses would make it next to torture, especially if he did it right now. Don set the needle down.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "I didn't mean to do that. It's just...your brother," he growled, getting angry again.

"Raphael, I take it?" Leo lowered the blanket and relaxed. "What'd he do this time?"

Called you crazy and wants to freeze us all to death, Don thought. "He says we're going up to the farm tomorrow."

"So soon?" Leo turned that over in his head. Mike had said as soon as he was fit to travel, but he'd expected a few more days at least, even a week.

"Yup. Before you're even out of bed and while it's still snowing up there. It's about half a mile to the warehouse and I'm not sure you can make it. And who knows how we'll manage on the roads. At least the ice'll mean we probably won't see any cops, but if we crash-" His voice trailed off as he noticed his brother shaking and holding back laughter. "What's so funny?"

As nervous as the impeding move made him, Leonardo couldn't help laughing. "You. All of you. You used to complain about me worrying all the time, but now you sound worse."

"Yeah, well..." Don grumbled to himself again. "At least I understand why you argue with Raph. This is so boneheaded..."

"It'll be all right." Walking to the van would be the hardest part, but he'd probably sleep on the road, so that wasn't too bad. He shifted again and winced as he pulled a torn muscle. For a moment he hoped his brother hadn't noticed, but of course he had.

"Okay," Don said, "you need this and I'm in a much better mood. Gimme your hand."

Steeling himself, Leo stretched out his right arm and winced as the needle sank in. The pain medication being pushed in burned even worse.

"I'll have to change all the bandages before we go," Don said. "Especially on your shoulder. You know, you're really lucky that cut went with the muscle. If it had gone across, you probably wouldn't move that arm again."

"Then I'd just take up Zatoichi's style," Leo said.

"Zatoichi?" Don finished up and put the hypodermic aside. "That an obscure swordsman?"

"Kind of," Leo said. "He's a one-armed samurai that defeated hundreds of enemies."

Donatello groaned, vaguely remembering the only movies he and Raphael could agree to watch civilly. "Leo, bad seventies kung-fu flicks do not count as styles."

"But he was really good-"

"Leo..."

"You should've seen the part where he crosses the bridge-"

"Shut up and go to sleep."

TBC...


	12. 12

****

Part 12

Navigating the sewers blind and injured was tricky at best, even with his brother guiding him through the endless maze of tunnels. Side by side, they walked slowly along the raised maintenance steps that kept them a few inches out of the snowy runoff melting from the street, Raphael lightly holding Leonardo's good arm. The route Raphael chose for them took longer to reach Donatello's garage and it ran parallel with one of the busier streets in the city, which meant loud cars, snow blowing through the gutters and people walking only inches away, but a straight walk was much easier than the difficult climbing and jumping that the other routes entailed.

A twisted metal grid lay on the path before them but Raphael didn't bother alerting his brother. When they came to it, Leonardo easily stepped over it as if bandages didn't cover his eyes. Raphael wondered why his sibling even needed him there as a guide since he already knew the way, sometimes turning the next corner before Raphael noticed the shadows changing.

A sharp gasp was his only warning. Raphael tightened his grip on Leo's arm while putting the other around his shoulders, steadying him before he fell. Leo paused, catching his breath and leaning gratefully on his sibling until the trembling stopped and he could stand straight again.

"You okay?" Raph whispered.

"Yeah, just..." Leo sighed and stood straight again. "Still tired. If it wasn't for all the noise up there, I could fall asleep."

They passed under a rain gutter, walking through the gray light. The traffic grew louder, then faded as they passed by. All the sounds combined into a low roar but one that was easily ignored. Raphael wondered if the constant noise might overwhelm his brother but Leo didn't show signs of being anything other than tired.

"We're almost there," he said. "Then you can go back to sleep."

"Yeah, right," Leo muttered. "I thought so too, but there's no way I'll get any sleep on the road."

"Let me do the worrying," Raph said. "Besides, nothing bad'll happen. Donny drives like an old woman."

"Complains like one, too," Leo said. "And Mike'll get bored and start annoying all of us, and you'll end up shouting at them to shut up, and that'll hurt Mike's feelings and that'll make Don take his side..."

Raphael knew better than to say it wouldn't happen. He settled for saying "not this time," and hoped he was right.

When they reached the warehouse, Raphael silently thanked Donatello's foresight in putting in a maintenance elevator instead of a simple ladder. Leo couldn't have climbed and the metal platform, though shaky, brought them out of the cold tunnels quickly. None of them knew where Donatello scavenged all of his parts, especially the specialized heavy equipment, which probably meant that parts and pieces were missing from all over the city's infrastructure. Once inside, Raphael led his sibling towards the van.

"Finally," Mike called from the van's roof where he sat with his legs dangling over the side. "I was wondering if we were ever gonna get going."

Donatello looked up from the engine, wiping his hands on a rag and slamming the hood down. "The van's all ready to go. Just get him settled in and we can take off."

Raphael nodded and led Leonardo around the back, helping him step inside and easing him into one of the chairs. A small pile of blankets lay on the floor but before he could grab one, he felt a tap on his shoulder and he turned.

"I'll handle it," Mike said. "You go up front before Don can insist on driving."

Raphael blinked. "Huh? How come?"

"'Cause him and me have been up since before dawn getting this thing ready for the drive, so unless you don't mind a sleep-deprived turtle driving on snowy roads..."

"Got ya," Raph said and went up front, plopping in the driver's seat.

Mike glanced at his brother. Leo was already asleep, but even though he seemed better off sitting up, Mike leaned down and pressed a lever on the side of the chair, reclining it back a few inches so he'd be a little more comfortable. After spreading two blankets over him, Mike yawned and shut the rear doors, locking them. While Raphael argued Donatello into the front passenger's seat, Mike sat down in the second chair and leaned back, bundling up in his own blanket. He didn't fall asleep but he drowsed, keeping an eye on Leonardo while listening to the engine turn on and rev a few times. He heard the automatic door open and then they were quietly heading down the road, catching the last rays of the gray sun.

Sometime later, Leo sighed and stretched, pushing the blankets down as he sat a little straighter. In the front seat, Donatello and Raphael argued but in such low voices that he could barely make out the words. Snowflakes struck the windshield and roof with loud piffs, and instead of wind, he only heard the constant hum of the engine and the drone of the road. He put one hand on his forehead and frowned. Either he was cold or he had a slight fever.

"Hey, you're awake," Mike said softly.

Leo nodded once. "How long was I asleep?" A tiny squeak came from Mike's chair as his brother leaned closer.

"Few hours. Still got another two to go." He lowered his voice so only they would hear. "You missed the fight."

Though he couldn't see Mike's grin, he could hear it. "Fight?"

"Oh yeah..." Mike glanced at his siblings in the front seat. Donatello sat in the passenger side drumming his fingers on the window while Raphael drove, peering through the heavy snowfall. "'You're going the wrong way,'" he said, mimicking first Donatello's voice, then Raphael's.

"'Am not!' 'You took the wrong exit. At this rate we'll be in Canada before we reach the farm.'

'You're just pissed I wouldn't let you drive.'

'Am not, and for the record, I am wide awake.'

'You are too, you are not, and we're going the right way.'

'The map clearly says'

'I can read a map, genius.'

'I thought so too until you said we were going west.'

'We gotta go west! The road crosses the river up ahead'

'Heaven forbid we cross a bridge. This route adds another hour to the trip'

'You wanna cross a toll bridge? Tell you what, I'll give you five bucks to hand the money over.'

'...toll bridge?'

'Read the map, Einstein. Toll bridge. Come on, I'll turn this van right around so you can hand the nice lady the toll.'

'...jerk.'

They haven't said much since," Mike finished with a chuckle.

Leo smiled. "Sounds so parental. Does that make Donatello the mom?"

"...you better hope I don't tell him that," Mike said, holding back laughter. "He'll make your shots hurt even worse."

"There's no way they could hurt worse," Leo said. A twinge of pain shot from his mangled hand up his arm, fading at the shoulder, and there was no time to hide his wince. A moment later he felt Mike's hand on his shoulder.

"Dude, if you're hurting, you have to tell me." Mike gently turned his hand over and found faint red spots on the bandages covering his palm. "Damn, probably tore a few stitches. Why didn't you say anything?"

"Didn't hurt much worse," Leo said. Mike was already unwrapping the gauze and gingerly touching the loose strings holding his hand together. It probably looked better than it felt, but he still hadn't seen it. He vaguely remembered a glint of steel out of the corner of his eye, but his memories from the tower, and especially of fighting Saki, were fuzzy at best. Mike's hand touched his mouth and he obediently opened, taking in two pills which he assumed were painkillers. He could have held the glass of water given next, he was sure he could, but his left arm felt too heavy to move and his right hand... While Mike turned away, presumably to get a needle and more bandages, Leo turned aside. This weakness grated on him. He couldn't walk without help, he could barely move, he felt exhausted after sleeping for ten hours. He squeezed his eyes shut as Mike went to work on his hand, but he didn't feel the bite of a needle. Instead he felt strong plastic being applied to the gash like a sticker, then another and another. "What is that?"

"Butterfly stitches," Mike said, "'least that's what Donatello called 'em. They're like band aids but really freaking strong. Good 'cause I don't wanna do real stitches while we're moving."

Leo didn't respond. While he knew he wouldn't mind doing this for any of his brothers were their positions reversed, he couldn't stand being taken care of. For now he was glad he couldn't see. He didn't have to see Splinter's disappointed face that the eldest son not only lost control of himself but also nearly killed his brothers in the process. He didn't have to watch any of them tending his wounds, though he always turned away even though he was blindfolded. Best of all, he didn't have to look in a mirror.

"Leo..." Mike started, wrapping the wound slower. "I was gonna ask before all this happened, but then, well, y'know, things happened, and, um...I was wondering...see, 'cause I got to look at the dragon you did on April's shop and I thought it looked really cool"

"You saw it?" Leo asked, still facing away from him. Inwardly he cringed. He never wanted anyone to look at his work, at least not his brothers.

"Yeah, a few weeks ago." Mike didn't notice his brother's discomfort and continued. "I was hoping maybe you'd consider...I mean, you don't have to, I'm just asking and I'll totally understand if you don't wanna, but...would you mind maybe doing something in my room? I've got a wall that's nearly empty, I just have to move the surf board and the bookshelf, oh and the juke box too."

He wanted him to...paint something? Leo squashed his initial reaction of "no way" and considered it. A huge space, no time constraints since there no humans to hide from, and someone to keep him company while he painted. A rambling, babbling voice to keep away the whispers in the walls and the echoes of the game in his head. Someone who wouldn't look at him with fear or disappointment.

"All right," he said, but too softly. Mike didn't hear him. He turned to face his little brother and gave a weak smile. "All right. I'll do it."

He didn't have to see Mike to know he was smiling. He simply felt the change in the air.

"Really?" Mike asked. "Cool! Maybe a big blue dragon and some unicorns and bunnies around it, and a rainbow in the background, oh oh, and maybe a pegasus flying by."

Leo's vision of an elegant Japanese dragon on a woodblock print suddenly changed into a child's crayon drawing. "Unicorns and bunnies?" he echoed.

"Sure, and some flowers, and a bright sun...definitely need some sky," Mike said, nodding sagely.

"Sky..." Ah, that was it, he thought. Something bright and happy instead of his dismally dark room. He had to remember that for Mike the dark was dismal. "Okay. We can decide on it when we go back home."

"Okay!" Mike couldn't help his grin. "Thanks, bro'. I mean it. I didn't think you'd actually say yes."

"I don't mind. I think I'd like doing it," Leo said. He started to shrug but stopped when it hurt. "And I kinda of owe you for...all this."

A pause. Leo felt a change in the air again and wished he could see his brother's face, tell what he was thinking. Mike finished bandaging his hand but he didn't let go, holding him for a moment.

"You don't owe us anything," Mike said almost too low for him to hear. "At all. If anything, we're the ones who owe you. You tried to keep us safe, you got us out in one piece"

"I couldn't control myself and I nearly got you killed," Leo said. He didn't bother trying to hide the self-loathing in his voice. They all knew how he felt. He wondered if Raphael had told anyone else about his suicide attempt in the game months ago.

"Welcome to the Crazy Psycho Turtle club," Mike said. "Raph's president, but you can be vice president." He smiled when Leo laughed, even if it was half-hearted. "Dude, all of us lose control and get in trouble at some point. You just tend to be really dramatic about it." He didn't get an answer but he didn't expect one. "How's the shoulder?"

"Fine," Leo said, grateful for the subject change. "Feels a little heavier."

"Probably 'cause of the walking you did. Side?"

"S'good."

Mike was tempted to check anyway. His brother had strange ideas of what was fine and good, and it wasn't like Leo could stop him if he did. Still...he yawned and sat back in his own chair. Let the painkillers work. The other bandages showed no signs of blood, so Leonardo probably didn't feel much worse than before. Mike pulled his own blanket up higher. The van's heater hummed steadily but the snow storm outside still made the van chilly. "I'll let you get some more sleep," he said. "I'll wake you when we get there."

Leo nodded once and lay his head back. Mike had to judge by his slowed breathing when he fell asleep, and he pulled the blankets up over him again. Not long after, Leo hissed in a breath and turned his head, moving in short jerky motions. Immediately recognizing the onset of a nightmare, Mike put his hand on Leo's and watched his brother calm down again. The change always worried him, that Leo could go from one extreme to another almost instantly.

"Everything okay back there?" Raphael called over his shoulder.

"Yeah," Mike said. "He went back to sleep."

Raphael smiled and took the next turn back to the highway. "Heh. He's not the only one who can keep everyone quiet."

"What?" Donatello glanced at him. "Why are you smiling?"

"No reason." Raphael settled back in his seat and relaxed. The snowfall wasn't so heavy anymore and wind no longer felt like it might blow the van off the road. In another couple hours they'd be at the farm, and then he'd put Leo to bed, set Mike to making dinner and get Donatello to start up the heater and close all the upstairs vents. If his big brother needed close companionship, he'd keep them all downstairs for the whole month if he had to. Already he had an idea for the living room, with its sleeper sofa and two large recliners.

"Fearless leader ain't the only one who can make plans," he said softly to himself. "I've got good plans, too. This one's working out just fine, and so will the next one." With any luck, he would get Leo to take back his old role in the family and Raphael could leave all the worrying with him again. "Even if I have to promise to get off his back every now and then."

Beside him, Donatello glanced sideways at his brother and wondered if Leo was the only one not wholly right in the head. Leonardo's breakdown was understandable, but now Raph was starting to talk to himself. What was it about the job of leading the family that turned the leader into a basketcase?

When they at last arrived on the farm, Raphael drove up close to the porch and parked, leaving the engine running. "Okay," he said, taking a deep breath. "We're here." The snow hadn't let up at all. In fact, it seemed to come down even harder now, and he stared at the heavy curtain of it falling in front of the windshield. That they'd made it here without incident seemed like a miracle. "Let's go in."

"Wait," Don said, putting his hand on his arm. "Not yet. We need get the heater on and make sure the place is empty first."

"But"

"No buts," Don cut him off. "It's warm in here, he's better off staying put until we get the heater fired up. Mike can stay with him. Okay?"

"Yeah, okay." Raph nodded once and got out with him, both of them closing the doors quickly before the cold could get in. The double slam woke Leo up, but he barely moved. Without his eyes to help him, he simply hoped that they were at the farm already. He was too exhausted to consider anything else. Mike still sat next to him and his breathing didn't sound agitated, so their brothers were probably just getting things ready.

"You awake?" Mike asked.

He gave a small nod. "Yeah. We there?"

"Yup. They're getting it ready." Mike leaned back in his seat and spun around in circles. "You hungry?"

Hungry? He had to think about it for a moment. "No."

They sat in silence for several minutes. Mike noticed as Leo drew his injured hand back under the blankets. His brother's hypersensitivity probably meant that he felt the cold more acutely than any of them. He sighed and spun his chair around a few more times. Every day the feeder genetics infesting his brother's DNA seemed even more of a curse than before. Couldn't anything good come of it? Just a tiny bit?

By the time Raphael came back, Leo was fast asleep again. Instead of waking him up and making him walk, Mike put his arms under him and picked him up, gathering the blankets along with him.

"Got him?" Raph asked, holding the rear doors open.

"Yeah," Mike said. "He's pretty light. Kinda awkward, though. I'm afraid I might fall over."

"You won't."

A single light in the living room turned the windows yellow, despite the heavy curtains in front of the glass. Mike carried his brother up the steps and inside, then saw Donatello pulling out the sleeper sofa. He only took a moment to spread several more blankets and pillows out and motioned for Mike to come closer. Once Leo was settled on the makeshift bed, they stood straight and heaved a sigh. Raphael heard them as he locked the door and smiled.

"Mission accomplished," he told them, and they smiled back. "Mike, why do you and Don go make dinner?"

"Yay, food," Mike said, heading straight for the kitchen with Donatello trailing after.

Raphael sat down on the side of the bed and slumped a little. He would never admit it, but driving so far with one of them too injured to move was nerve-wracking. They'd done it before, but it felt worse when he had the responsibility of getting them there safely.

"You were the reason we came up the first time, too," he said softly, glancing at his brother. "I didn't realize how much we use you up."

In the kitchen, pots and pans rattled on the stovetop as Mike and Don argued about what to make and how to make it. After a particularly loud crash, he noticed Leonardo's breathing alter slightly even if he didn't move. Raph smirked. His brother wouldn't lie, but he sure wasn't above hiding.

"Hey, Leo."

"Mm." He raised his head slightly, then relaxed again. "We all made it?"

"Yup. In one piece." Raph frowned, wondering if he should ask, then figured he'd better. It was the reason he'd dragged them all out here. "Leo...what do you hear?"

Leonardo held silent for a moment. "Snowflakes hitting the windows. Wind's still a little loud. Heater's rattling and I think Mike just hit Don with a wooden spoon."

"Anything else?" Raphael asked with a laugh.

"...no. I...nothing." Leo sounded like he'd just discovered something wonderful. "Nothing else. It's quiet."

"Good. Go back to sleep." Not caring if his brother really fell asleep or just faked it, he grinned triumphantly at the ceiling. "Mission accomplished," he whispered.

TBC...


	13. 13

Much apologies for the lateness of this chapter. I have a multitude of excuses, ranging from thesis to writer's block to Leo just not wanting to talk to Raph after that nightmare. Still, I'm sorry it took so damn long. There should be one more chapter left.

****

Part 13

Whispering voices seeped into his consciousness. Awake or asleep? Hard to tell with his eyes held shut. After a moment, Leo recognized his brothers' voices as the whispers. Awake, then. He listened for awhile as they spoke softly, probably trying not to wake him, but he couldn't make out the words. Strange how they could sound just like the water in the walls yet be comforting instead.

He took a deep breath and sighed in relief that he could breathe almost normally. He often breathed out too fast and had to drag the air back in, but at least he didn't feel like he was drowning anymore. And the sharp aches that had necessitated sedatives for the past few days had dwindled to dull twinges. Maybe now he could convince Donatello to lay off some of the shots.

One of his brothers lay beside him, fast asleep with his head on Leo's shoulder. Since his constant nightmares meant he needed someone beside him, his siblings took turns sleeping next to him. None of them complained since it meant sharing the bed instead of curling up on a chair. With the bandages still wrapped thickly around his eyes, he couldn't tell who it was at first, but the light breathing told him it couldn't be Michelangelo and the fidgeting meant it wasn't Donatello. He adjusted himself slightly under the blankets, wincing as he pulled the muscles on his side. Saki's blades hadn't sliced deep but the wound was healing slowly, constantly reopened by the slightest movement. It never bled much but Donatello nearly always refused to let him out of bed because of it.

At least he could get to the bathroom himself. If he hadn't been able to...he frowned. He didn't think he could live with that kind of humiliation. His first escape out of bed had been simply to get to the shower, not caring that he'd soak the bandages through. Thank heaven that the door had a strong lock. He couldn't take a shower silently. The moment Donatello heard the water running, he'd rushed towards the bathroom as if worried that Leo might be trying to drown himself, but he was reluctant to break Casey's house and had just called through the door to make sure Leo was all right before waiting patiently in the hall for him to come out. He waited nearly an hour. Hot water relieved so much of the pain that Leo used every last drop, nearly falling asleep standing up. He'd almost felt like himself again afterwards and didn't stumble at all when Donatello took him back to bed, letting him exchange the wet bandages for dry ones, including the ones over his eyes.

Of course he kept his eyes covered. Even when Donatello changed them, his eyes stayed closed. Raphael wasn't forcing him to stay blind, and he knew that his vague reasons about being sensitive to light wouldn't keep his brothers satisfied for much longer, but...he sighed. He needed the darkness. Maybe in a few days he might slip the blindfold off for a few minutes or hours, but for now he just wanted to hide. At least he didn't feel them watching him so much. Sneaking off had ultimately been a relief to all of them, a sign that he was improving and, more importantly, that he was willing to improve.

"You're awake."

Startled, Leo jerked back and winced when he pulled his side wound again. "I thought you were asleep."

"No, I was watching..." Raph paused. "Oh. Sorry. Forgot you can't see it."

"I don't hear it," Leo said, ignoring the last comment. "I can hear the electricity humming, but--"

"I didn't wanna wake you. It's got those subtitles for deaf people," Raph said. "Closed captioning, I think. Hey, you hungry?"

"...not much."

"Great, I'll get you something from the kitchen." Raphael carefully climbed out of bed and pulled the blanket back over his brother. "Don't go back to sleep, okay?"

"Sure." He relaxed again and wished the throbbing pain in his side would go away and take the rest of the pain throughout his body with it. Between Donatello's injections and his injuries, he couldn't tell which hurt more. His brother's needles felt like swords and the agony that Don described as a light pinch lasted for hours. A side benefit of his blindfold meant that his brother never saw his eyes watering from the pain.

The whispering in the background increased to where he could make out an occasional word or two. After a moment he heard the words "pills" and "hiding" from Mike. So they were talking about him. No surprise, really, but he'd never thought that his youngest brother would be the one to see how he hid the pain. Of course he'd never admit to hurting, but if Mike could get Donatello to switch to pills, his life would be much better.

"Got it." Raphael eased back into bed. "Here, it's egg drop so you shouldn't have a problem. Careful, it's still hot."

"...thanks." Leo sat a little straighter and took the offered cup. "When did you order out?"

"We didn't. That's Mike's cooking." Raph grinned as his brother hesitated. "It's okay, he's gotten better."

"That's not saying much," Leo said, but he took a sip anyway. And blinked, although his brother wouldn't see it. "That's not bad."

"Told ya'." Raph settled in about arm's distance from his brother and stretched. Staying with Leo as he slept was easy enough, but it made for sore muscles. "You're gonna have to start eating different food, y'know. You've already lost too much weight."

"Mother hen," Leo muttered.

"I mean it," Raph said.

"I'm fine."

"You're tired all the time, you're weak, you're not eating right--"

"--and yet I still-handedly destroyed the foot clan and saved my siblings from a blazing skyscraper," Leo defended himself.

"And nearly got yourself killed," Raph said softly. "And when are you gonna take those bandages off your eyes?"

Leo held silent for a moment, finishing the soup and setting it down beside the bed, then turned his back to Raphael and burrowed under the blankets. Raphael must have known he was faking sleep, but he didn't say anything. Leo didn't know how long he lay like that, trying not to think about his self-imposed blindness. No doubt Donatello had several of his darkened masks for him, but he couldn't bear the thought of seeing anything right now. He remembered how the world looked when he saw it with feeder eyes. He was scared he might still see it the same way.

He didn't realize he'd fallen asleep until the familiar sounds of demons in the dark rushed over him, the flood of death and corpses filling the room as blood flowed over his hands. He breathed in sharply and shook his head, trying to block the sounds out, sick of revisiting this world every time he fell asleep. He knew he was dreaming but he couldn't drive the memories away. The only way to stop the game from overwhelming him was to fight back, but that only dragged him in deeper until he forgot he was dreaming. Screamers skittered towards him, their teeth gleaming in the faint light, and he had little choice but to flex his own claws and--

A soft touch on his shoulder drove the sounds away, leaving him in complete silence. The demons faded away and blood vanished. Even his claws started to fade, and he watched his hands slowly change from three-pronged talons to his normal fingers. All around him, the dark halls of the game changed to the main room of the lair. He sighed in relief and sat by the stream, comforted by the faint light playing on the water's surface. For some reason the lair was always dark and empty when he came out of a nightmare, his brothers and master far away. The loneliness was comforting.

Some time later he woke up. The house was just as silent as his dream and for a moment he wondered if he was still asleep, but after a few seconds he grew aware of one of his brothers' hands on his shoulder, limp and heavy. And cold. Had they turned off the heat? He sat straight and listened for his brother's breathing, but he heard nothing but his own harsh hisses. The hand fell away but still his brother didn't wake up. A chill ran through him and he ripped off his blindfold.

Raphael's lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling, his throat torn open with great rends in his arms and legs. Beside him, half on the bed and half off, Mike lay against Raphael's side. Mike's own hand was gone, his arm stripped of flesh right down to the bone. With a strangled cry, Leo backed away, falling to the floor and landing on what was left of Donatello. His brown eyes had been gouged out, his face chewed off.

Shaking uncontrollably, Leo stared at their bodies, unable to look away. The entire room was red, splattered with blood and gore. He stopped moving and brought his hands up. His claws, sharper than his swords, still held bits of skin on the edges, and as he swallowed reflexively, he tasted dried blood on his teeth. He tried to scream but his voice wouldn't work and he scrambled back.

When he fell off the couch, he knew he was awake this time. Afraid of what he might see, he slowly tugged the bandages off his eyes and looked around the room, squinting in the bright light. The room was clean, the walls white, and Raphael lay fast asleep on the other side of the daybed. Mike slept draped over the armchair, snoring loudly, and Donatello lay on the recliner, a cushion holding up the book he'd fallen asleep reading.

"A dream," he whispered to himself. "Just a dream, just a dream, just...oh God." He curled up and lowered his head, trying to force the image of his dead brothers out of his mind. It wouldn't leave; it only grew stronger. The room felt tiny and the air thick, suffocating, pushing in on him and threatening to drown him. With a muffled groan, he stood up, ignoring the sudden dizzyness as he limped towards the front door. To his surprise, it wasn't locked, but he didn't even think about scolding his siblings. Instead he silently opened it and stepped onto the front porch, not caring if he closed it behind himself.

The sunlight glared off the snow covering the ground and trees and made the world almost blindingly white. He closed his eyes again and grabbed the railing, taking a deep, cold breath. Snowflakes hit his hands and face and he shivered. He couldn't stop shaking but at least he could breathe. The images burned in his closed eyes and he clung to the railing. A nightmare, or a taste of things to come?

Someone draped a blanket over his shoulders. Startled, he looked to his left and found Raphael standing next to him, wrapped in his own blanket and staring at him. Leo blinked. Now that he looked properly at his brother, he noticed all the bruises on his arms and face. He breathed out and looked down at Raphael's hands, the fading burns on his palms. Were Mike and Don just as battered? Of course. He'd dragged him down a burning building, why didn't he realize they'd be hurt?

"Leo?" Raphael touched his arm and Leo realized he'd asked something.

"What?"

Raphael stared into his eyes as if he could read his thoughts, and Leo briefly wondered if his eyes were still pitch black or if they'd miraculously turned back to normal. Then he remembered how long Don thought purging his DNA of breeder genetics would take and slumped slightly.

"Leo...are you all right? I heard the door and saw you standing out here. You weren't planning on running off, were you?"

"No, not planning," Leo said. Whether he'd spontaneously dash for the forest and save his siblings from himself, he couldn't say, especially if he had that nightmare again.

Raphael noticed the verbal equivocating but didn't press it. Leo wasn't actually running, so he could afford to give him some benefit of the doubt. "How're your eyes feeling?"

"A little harder to see," he said. "Sunlight still hurts. I'll probably feel better when the sun sets."

When his brother didn't respond, he realized something was wrong. He lowered his head and leaned a little harder on the railing. "It's nighttime, isn't it?" he whispered.

"It's the full moon," Raph said quickly, "it's strong out here without any city lights, and the stars are really freakin' bright."

Leonardo didn't answer. His world suddenly cut in half, he realized he would be completely blind during the day. He'd only be able to see at night, and only with the help of a dark mask at that. How far gone was he? All he needed were the claws and irrational bloodlust, and those were just a nightmare away. There was no way Don could save him, his shots were just staving off the inevitable...Leo winced. Those horrible, painful shots...maybe he should spare them all the effort and run away, run far away and--

"You just have to give it time," Raph said. "You went really deep this time, but now that we know what's happening, we can slow it down. Bring you back."

"How can you be sure?" Leo asked. "I'm more like...that thing...than I'm like you anymore."

"That's not true," Raph said. His brother didn't even turn towards him and he wondered what he'd seen in his nightmares this time to scare him so badly. "And I'm tired of trying to convince you that you're still my brother."

"You don't understand," Leo said. He pulled the blanket tight around himself like a shield. "Turning into that thing, it...it's not just the claws or the eyes. I think differently. Everyone becomes a target. It's not like I go insane, Raph, it's more like it pushes me out and takes over."

"If that was true we'd all be dead now," Raph said, glancing through the door to make sure their siblings were still asleep. "I admit, the bloodlust made you attack me, but once Shredder was dead, you didn't try to hurt me again."

"Raph--"

"No, you listen to me. You can't think straight when that thing in you takes over, I get it. But you're still you. You keep harpin' on how you got us all out, but I guess you ain't listening to yourself. You haven't hurt us 'cause you'll never hurt us, and I swear to God, if you ever try running off 'cause you're afraid I'll drag you back myself." He took a deep breath and stared at his brother, who again didn't answer. "You saw something different tonight, didn't you?" Leo shifted, and Raph nodded to himself. Bingo. "What was the nightmare this time?"

"...I don't want to talk about it--"

"You don't got a choice. I know you're thinking about taking off again, and that's what got you into this mess in the first place. So spill."

Leo visibly flinched. Without the mask or his blindfold, it was easy to read his expression. Raphael sighed and put his hand on Leo's, holding him still when he tried to jerk away. "Fine. I'll guess. You dreamed we were dead?"

"I..."

The sharp intake of breath told Raph he was right. "And you'd killed us?"

Leo didn't answer for several seconds. When he did, he turned his head away. "That wasn't all I'd done."

Wasn't all? Raphael remembered what feeders did and froze. "Oh...geez...you thought you...?"

"I thought I was awake," Leo whispered. "I was on the couch, but something was wrong, and when I took off my bandages...I'd torn you apart. I'd stripped most of Mike's arm off, and Donatello...I think I ate his eyes." He groaned and leaned on the railing, feeling even worse than when he'd just woken up. The dream was slowly fading from his memory, but flashes of his siblings' mutilated bodies remained so vivid that he knew they'd never fade.

Beside him, Raphael felt a little sick. He'd been hoping his brother was just being paranoid as usual. He couldn't imagine that...even in a dream, that his brother would...

The snowflakes started falling harder, stinging when they hit, and Raphael reached to brush off the small layer on his mask. He'd worry about this dream later. Right now, Leo looked like he wanted nothing more than to shake free and disappear into the woods. He knew he could drag his brother back inside easily, but that wouldn't work forever.

Leo didn't seem to notice his brother's problem, too focused on his own worries. "What if I don't come back, Raph?" he asked. "What if this is as far as I get?"

"It's not." He couldn't help stepping closer and putting his arm around his brother. "You're already getting better. You just have to give it time. You can't let this rattle you."

"It's too much to risk," Leo said, turning away. "It hurts just thinking about it."

Realizing his brother could probably beat himself up for hours, Raphael lost his last bit of patience and snapped, "look, running off ain't gonna solve anything. You're just gonna have to accept that it's gonna take time. And I mean it, if you even try to disappear, I'll carry you back home and lock you in the lair."

To Raphael's surprise, Leo smiled. "I can't even run off at night for fun?"

"Of course not," Raph said, "it's too dangerous right now. You're unpredictable."

"'Unpredictable'," Leo echoed, his smile growing. "When did my obnoxious little brother turn into Splinter, junior?"

Raphael smirked. "Since my big brother got sick of the job. And speaking of which...I, uh..." he sighed and shook his head. "Y'know what, never mind. I shouldn't spring this on you just yet--"

"You want me to take it back," Leo said softly.

Raphael blinked in surprise. "How'd you know?"

"The way you've been acting since we got here. Tired, but like you're expecting some kind of relief soon." Leo tilted his head, popping a joint in his neck. "And it's how I'd feel if I'd shouldered all the weight you had to carry this year."

The deep guilt in Leo's voice made Raph wince. "It's not like you could control a lot of what happened," he offered.

"I know, and that only made it harder on you." Leo breathed out and leaned tiredly on his sibling. He hadn't been up for this long for several days and the effort was exhausting. "Just give me a little while longer. Another couple of months. Then I can go back to bossing you around."

"You sure? 'Cause you're gonna be resting for awhile even after we get back and I don't want to put too much on you."

"I'm sure. Truth is, I kinda missed being in charge." His smile grew a little. "I didn't realize how much I hate taking orders."

"Sucks, don't it?" Raph grinned. "Can't believe I'll be happy when you take it back."

"Neither can I," Leo said dryly. "I know you too well, you'll be complaining the moment I say you can't do something."

"Then don't tell me not to do anything," Raph said. "And in return, I promise not to get under your skin so often."

"I'll believe that when I see it." Leonardo sighed. The nightmare hadn't left him, but having his brother there made it a little easier to handle. "I'd better go back in. I feel like I'm gonna fall asleep."

"After breakfast," Raphael insisted, relieved when Leo didn't argue. Even though he knew Leo could find his way blind, he still took his hand and guided him back into the house, leading him back to the bed and dropping his extra blanket on top of him.

His eyes still shut, Leonardo listened to his brother move through the kitchen. For now he could barely stand to move around, but maybe in a couple of weeks...if he really did start getting better...he sighed as he realized Raphael was right. Coming back from near death was going to take longer than a couple of weeks.

"Mmf..." Mike stirred on the armchair, wincing as he stretched. He yawned and glanced over to see if Raphael was still at Leo's side. "Oh, you're awake. Where's Raph?"

Leo couldn't help burrowing under the blankets a little more. Even with the heat on, standing outside during a snowfall left him freezing. "In the kitchen."

"Cooking already?" Mike looked out the window. "It's still dark. Hey, it's snowing!"

Dark? Leo cracked an eye and winced. Looked more like a sunny day to him. "Mike, do you know if Don brought any of my masks with him?"

"I think so." Mike rolled off the chair and onto the floor, crawling the couple of feet over to where they'd stacked the bags they'd brought with them. He dug around for a few seconds, then tossed something onto the bed. "Found one. I know he's got more, but his bag's always so messy."

"Absent-minded genius," Leo said, slipping the mask over his eyes and turning the room a dark sepia color. Now he could open his eyes without risking a headache.

"Mind if I turn on the tv?" Mike asked, grabbing the remote while he sat back down.

"Go ahead," Leo answered. While his little brother flipped channels so fast that the flashing lights made him turn away, he listening to the wind and ice outside and to Raphael working busily in the kitchen. He didn't feel like eating ever again, but Mike's chatter slowly eased the hurt of his nightmare. Maybe Raphael was right and things would get better after a few months. And maybe it would only get worse, he knew, but he couldn't give up hope, not when it meant giving up his family.

"Hope plain ol' bacon and eggs is good," Raph called out, "'cause that's all yer getting!"

"Sounds good!" Mike yelled back.

Quiet, but not so quiet that Leo couldn't hear, Raphael groaned as he realized he'd have to cook three servings instead of two. And when Donatello work up, snapping at Mike to turn the volume down, Raphael broke down and dug out enough for four.

"Hey, you're up," Donatello said, getting off the sofa and sitting next to Leonardo. "How're you feeling?"

"Tired, but better." He held still as Don moved the mask up and made him open his eyes. He grimaced and leaned back, closing them again.

"Sorry," Don said. "More sensitive than before?"

"A lot more. The room looks as bright as day, and outside I could barely stand to look up."

"Uh-huh. Well, I'm not entirely surprised. Your eyes seem the most susceptible to further mutation." He let Leo put his mask back down but he frowned as a thought occurred to him. "Outside?"

"Uh...yeah. I had a nightmare, so I went outside to clear my head."

Without another word, Donatello gently pushed him to one side and tugged the bandages on his side just enough to check on the wound underneath. He sighed in relief and glared at his big brother. "You're lucky, it didn't re-open. The stitches look like they're finally taking. But no more walking around outside, got it?"

"Got it." It was healing? That was good then, he reasoned, since feeders weren't designed to heal. His own genetics were finally starting to fight back. He wasn't naive enough to think he wouldn't have another nightmare or feel anything but revulsion for most food yet, but...it was a start.

And when he was able to eat what everyone else was eating while watching a nature documentary on lions in Africa, he finally felt a little more normal. True, the bacon reminded him of strips of flesh and the eggs of brains and internal organs, and the lions hunting gazelles reminded him of demons chasing after swift screamers. This was a small victory but it was still a victory, and after so many losses, he would take what he could get.

TBC...


	14. Chapter 14

Apologies for taking so long. This last chapter absolutely had to be dragged out of me kicking and screaming. ****

Part 14

Tonight there was no moon, and Leonardo moved through the darkness with a thrill borne of newly realized freedom. After nearly five weeks of confinement in a house that seemed to shrink every day, at last he stood outside in deep snow with the wind against his face. The bandages were off, the stitches gone, and the hunt was on. All he heard was the sound of the tree branches covered in ice groaning in the breeze and, in the distance, three heartbeats pounding with anticipation.

His youngest brother, the only one he hadn't caught yet, hid somewhere close by. Mike's heartbeat, quick and light as himself, echoed between the dark trees and called to Leonardo like the scratching of rabbit paws in cold earth called to a hunting wolf. He followed that sound silently over the snow, moving along exposed rocks and fallen trunks when he could, slowing down to glide over the fresh snow when he had to. Far from freezing, the ice exhilarated him, waking him from weeks of healing sleep. Now he came back to life, breathing deep, moving without pain and without the tightness borne of torn muscles and skin. Not far now.

He didn't have to struggle to hide in scattered shadows when the night was one great shadow covering the whole forest and the starlight gave him only silhouetted edges, a glint of silver hinting at the slope of the snow. He paused and crouched down, brushing his hand over the ground. Michelangelo's footprints stood out to his adapted eyes nearly as much as his heartbeat pounded in the air, his shallow breath quickening as he hid from his older brother. So close now.

Breathing through his mouth, tasting the air while listening to the sounds coursing over every branch, over every stone, over his skin so that he became part of the night wind, Leonardo slowly, deliberately crept towards the tall sycamore he knew his brother was hiding behind. Michelangelo breathed a little faster, as if he knew his brother stalked just a few feet away though there was no way he could've heard. Leonardo tensed, digging his hands into the ground as he prepared to pounce.

Michelangelo screamed as a dark blur struck him from the right, sending him sideways into the snow. He flailed and managed to grab Leo's arm, dragging him after, but his brother was on top and there was no way to escape. He stared with wide eyes but it was nearly impossible to see his brother against the black trees and sky. He could only see his outline against the stars.

Leo sat up, brushing snow off his hands. "Gotcha," he laughed.

"Don't do that!" Mike gasped, glaring at him. "You nearly gave me a heart attack."

"If you have a heart attack, it'll be all the junk food you eat that does it, not me." Leo stood but didn't offer a hand up to his brother. There was no way he could have withstood his brother's weight without falling.

"You're just ticked I got you to eat nachos last night," Mike said. He got up, using the motion to mask his hand as he gathered a large amount of snow and flung it at his sibling. To his dismay, Leo spotted it in time and dodged sideways so quickly that it seemed like he hadn't moved at all. "Man, that's just not fair."

"Brat." Leo glanced back through the forest. Not too far away he saw Donatello and Raphael standing on the back porch staring into the trees anxiously. He sighed and turned towards them. "Come on, let's go back before they think I ate you."

"You can see them? Do they look pissed?" Mike winced as he walked beside him. "I wonder how long that was. Raph said I'd better last longer than five minutes, but that seemed really quick. Can you hear them? Are they talking about me?"

"No, I can't hear them yet, they're too far away." And at this distance, they were more like blurry shapes. He only guessed by their nervous fidgeting that they were anxious. He looked back at his brother. "He told you to last more than five minutes? I hope you didn't have a bet going."

"Uh, kind of. Last slice of the chocolate cake I made."

Leo couldn't help laughing. He hadn't had any and couldn't stand the thought of it, no matter how Mike had pleaded for him to eat some. Truthfully, though, Mike hadn't pleaded very hard. "You should've tried harder, then. There's no way that was five minutes."

"Nuh-huh, that had to be over five minutes. Dude, how could you know if it was or wasn't? You couldn't have counted the seconds." Mike grabbed his shoulder. "You didn't count, did you?"

"No," Leo assured him, "I didn't have to. Donatello's been timing me. It took less than three minutes getting him and Raph combined, and nailing you didn't take much longer."

"Oh, that must've made Raph real happy."

"It's not all Raph's fault." Although Raphael's grumbling about being in the snow and wind had helped. "Donatello was using a glow-in-the-dark watch to time me. I spotted the light the moment he turned it on."

When they got to the porch, Mike did his best to ignore Raphael's smirk. "Three minutes, forty-five seconds, wimp. That cake's mine."

Mike stuck his tongue out and walked inside. Leo heard him mumble something about "not if I get there first" but he didn't say anything.

"You took a little longer finding Mike," Donatello said, putting his watch away. "Is the cold starting to get to you?"

"Not really. He just didn't have a bright glowing watch on him," Leo said. Now that he was in the small circle of light coming from the house, he slipped his mask back on. "How'd I do?"

"Pretty good," Donatello said. "You got faster with each of us. You're feeling all right? No twinges or anything?"

"I'm fine," Leo said, slightly exasperated, "just like I was yesterday, and the day before that..."

"Okay, I get it," Don said with a smile. "You're officially all healed up. Just don't push yourself for a few more days, okay?"

Leo nodded once and watched him go back in, feeling like a heavy weight had lifted from his shoulders. Proving to his brother that he was capable of taking care of himself again, especially after such a long convalescence, had been nearly impossible. Raphael had given him the idea of a kind of obstacle course and Michelangelo had mentioned while watching a sci-fi horror movie that the aliens reminded him of the things in Stockman's pocket dimension, so he'd come up with the idea of tracking them down. If he could catch three healthy turtles, he was allowed to go five feet without anyone telling him to get back in bed to rest.

Finally he stood on the back porch, free to watch the clouds drift across the stars. Snow began to fall again but gently, adding a fresh layer to the ice and sleet. He leaned against the railing and closed his eyes. The cold was a welcome change from the stifling living room.

"Not still thinking about running off, are ya?" Raphael stood beside him, staring at the sky.

"No," Leonardo said. "You were right. I just had to get control over myself again."

They stood silent for awhile, listening to the wind and to their brothers as Michelangelo nearly broke several dishes in the kitchen. Once the squabbling died down again, Raphael glanced at Leo. "I gotta admit, I was impressed with how fast you found all of us."

"It wasn't hard," Leo said, never opening his eyes. "Even if I couldn't see so well at night, I could hear all of you."

"You heard us breathing?" Raphael asked.

""Not just that. When it's quiet, I can hear your heartbeat. All I had to do was listen."

"All you had to do was hunt," Raph said, and he kept going before Leonardo could interrupt. "I know, you weren't hunting us really, but you were still using that part of you, right?"

"I can't live without it," Leo said, then winced at how that sounded. "I mean, I can't see the way I used to, my hearing's changed, food doesn't taste the same...I'm one step away from claws, Raph, I can't help but adapt."

"That's what worries me." Raphael turned to face him, arms crossed. "You're really comfortable with it now."

"Would you rather I have another nervous breakdown?" Leo snapped.

"No, no, it ain't that--"

"You're the one who told me not to worry about it."

"That's when you were fighting it," Raphael said. "Now it's like you're completely opposite. You're enjoying it."

Biting back an immediate "no I wasn't," Leo lowered his head. After a few seconds, he answered. "I can't help it. Everything feels so...vivid. It's like I've been asleep all of my life and now I'm suddenly awake. Once I stopped resisting and started exploring what I could do, it didn't seem so bad anymore."

"And the nightmares?" Raph asked.

"Gone." Leo smiled and glanced at him. "I haven't had one since that night."

Raphael didn't say anything. No nightmares could be a good sign, hopefully that his brother's subconscious was fully his own again. Or it could mean that he'd now that he'd stopped fighting and had accepted these changes, his subconscious no longer needed to hide in his dreams. He sighed to himself. Maybe he was just jealous.

"Well, at least your nightmares stopped," he said, leaning against the railing again.

Leo tilted his head. "You have nightmares?"

"Yup. About when we were coming up after ya." Raphael closed his eyes, remembering the fear he'd felt, the sense of urgency when he heard his brother scream. "Those damn stairs seemed to go on forever, especially when we were slogging through all the dead bodies you left us. But the last few flights were the worst. I heard you and Shredder fighting above us, but no matter how fast I ran, it didn't feel like I was getting anywhere."

Although he could hear his other siblings conversing in the kitchen, Leonardo glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were alone before answering. "I barely remember any of that. I remember thinking that you were dead...I heard you die so clearly..."

"That was the hallucinogen," Raphael said.

"Yeah, but...he set the trap so well. If I hadn't been...what I am now...I would've died. I would've been blinded by rage and he would have defeated me easily."

"Instead he ran and you had to chase after him," Raph said.

"I scared him, I think," Leo said softly. "He was used to me being..."

"Honorable to the point of being stuck-up?" Raph asked.

Leo glared sideways at him. "Something like that."

"But...before that, when you were still climbing up, you left one hell of a mess for us. I mean, the whole stairwell was covered in blood and the bodies...was that you or was that the thing inside you?"

"Me." Leonardo didn't move, staring at the snow falling amongst the tree branches. "I know that part of me scares you, but it's always been there. It just got released in Stockman's game and it never went away."

"I thought I was the one with anger issues," Raphael said, sighing loudly. "You always had it together."

"I kept it under control," Leo said. "But then Stockman broke more than just my genetics. After the game, I couldn't keep it hidden anymore."

"Really?" Raph asked. "'Cause I remember you stopping me from getting really rough in a lot of fights. In fact, it's usually been you who stops me when I get angry and lose it."

"I..." Leonardo tried to think back and remember old fights. He didn't remember a bloodthirst before the game, but surely it existed.

His brother's confusion only confirmed Raphael's worries. "Leo, you didn't start feeling like this until we got you out of Stockman's hands. You fought it for awhile but now you're starting to take it for granted."

"It doesn't matter," Leo said firmly. "I've got it under control--"

"And hunting us right now?" Raphael asked.

"I wasn't hunting you," Leo snapped. "It wasn't for real."

"Listen to yourself!" Raphael growled. "Not real? You said yourself you're just one step away from claws. You're slowly getting better, but we could still lose you."

For a moment Leonardo didn't say anything. He just turned Raphael's words over in his head, considering them. "It doesn't feel nearly as strong as it used to," he said softly. "It's much weaker than before. I haven't..." He stopped. He didn't want to tell him about the images that used to run through his head, visions of his siblings dead, of hundreds of humans in mangled piles.

"I trust you," Raphael said. "Just...don't give in so easy, okay? Don't lose who you are."

Leo merely nodded. They watched the snow for a little while, but Raphael finally started to feel the cold and went back inside after making Leo promise to come in soon.

When he was finally alone for the first time in weeks, Leonardo sat down on the back porch steps and stared at the clouds. His brothers talked and laughed inside the house, and he couldn't help smiling when Raphael squawked in outrage as he discovered that Michelangelo had run off with the last slice. But they carried on easily without him, and he found the quiet offered by the snow much more familiar and comfortable.

If Raphael was right, then he could be an even greater threat now than before, now that he couldn't tell the difference between what he was now and what he'd been before the game. But he felt more in control of himself now. No more catatonic spells, no more nightmares, no more images in his head and he was even having an easier time eating. Never mind that food still reminded him of body parts.

They'd said it'd take time for him to come back entirely, to slowly become what he used to be. But now it seemed like they'd given up on that hope and wished he'd come even halfway back. He felt like a disappointment, but...he stared at his hands, clawless and normal. Whatever he was now, the sensations he felt, the wind and the sounds and the rush when he hunted, they were too much to give up. Maybe Raphael was right and this had been developing for some time in his subconscious, borne from the artificial high that the game gave him. But even if they were stronger now, he controlled them easier. He didn't have to be afraid of them.

The snow turned colder and he shivered. The night and frost had its uses, but right now the warm glow of the kitchen lights seemed far more inviting. With a last look at the darkness, he went inside, closing the kitchen door gently behind him.

End


End file.
